I get a great deal of pleasure receiving a well-chosen card. I love the idea of someone selecting it with me in mind. Lewes seems to have an extraordinary number of shops selling cards, especially arty, expensive ones. And despite all the talk of ‘Men are from Mars’, far more pertinent, I think, is to wonder why women are from Hallmark. My sister-in-law buys and sends cards I find hard to believe really exist, they are so bizarrely specific: ‘A Special Wish on Your First Trip to the Dentist, from Your Beloved Cousin’. If you did a survey of who buys and sends greeting cards, I’m prepared to bet that the results would show that it’s mostly women. It’s a shame because men can be brilliant at it and I’ve had lovely cards from male friends in my time, but once straight men get into relationships, they seem to give up. What’s that about? I like sending cards, but crucially do it for pleasure not duty. Problems arise when couples get together and it’s taken for granted that the woman will take over the card-sending role. A bad move. Why would anyone want to be an unpaid P.A? And men need to do more communicating, not less. An unexpected upshot of telling my partner’s family that we were married (we’d done it on the quiet ten years previously) was the subsequent assumption that I’d pick up the slack on his remiss approach to remembering their birthdays. And I’d do that because..? Maybe Hallmark need a range of boy-cards that self post. Possibly on the back of a beer mat.