It's nearly Christmas. You may have noticed. Christmas cards are flooding through the letter box and with the cards come the inevitable round robin letters. I used to resent these. They had a tendency to make my own life appear hopelessly empty and uneventful: "This year we climbed Machu Picchu, swam with dolphins and snowboarded with yeti. Life is good!"

It's hard to maintain a jocular Christmas attitude when you're tearing up letters and kicking furniture. I regard it as an achievement if I get to the end of the year with my dignity intact and my nerves unshredded. However, as I grow older, wiser and begin to run out of furniture, I realise Yuletide messages do have a purpose.

As we all get busier and busier, we see our friends less frequently and it's easy to lose touch. It's not the big events but the day to day stuff which makes life worth sharing; the multitude of connective threads which spin out of friendly, aimless conversation whilst doing something else - walking a dog, mooching round shops, throwing pebbles into the sea.

Life is awfully big and scary at times. But we’re all in this together and friends provide a safety net when the universe appears especially malevolent. If you don't have time to do that on a day to day basis, at least catch up at Christmas. Find out how someone’s year has been even if it does appear more exciting that yours. And when you've finished reading their missive give them a call, fire off an email or send them a postcard.

In lieu of a round robin from this particular cartoonist, have a splendid Christmas, an excellent new year and ... send me a postcard sometime.