I always find it hard to throw away Christmas and birthday cards

The decorations have been down for weeks but a pile of Christmas cards still sits on the worktop in the kitchen, awaiting their fate. How should I deal with them? Straight into the recycling or into a box in an already overcrowded cupboard, to be transformed into artfully handmade-looking gift tags when December next rolls around?

Every year I promise myself I’ll try that. Every year I chuck a box of ready-made tags into my trolley during the last pre-Christmas dash around the supermarket. In my imagination, I am Kirstie Allsopp without the controversial views. In reality, I will never have the time to dye napkins pale pink with avocado skins. Likewise, I will never buy a pair of crimping scissors and make those Christmas tags. So, it’s into the recycling bag the cards must go. But not all of them. First I have to make few decisions.

It's easy to dispose of the corporate cards, which are thankfully increasingly rare. Like their email equivalents, which always earn a quick delete, I can get rid of them without the slightest flicker of sentimentality. There’s something about them that is utterly at odds with the kind thoughts described in the printed messages inside. The scribbled signatures beneath those “best wishes for the season” seem hurried and resentful. “Really? It’s that time of year again? I have to sign how many cards?” I can understand the signees’ frustration and I certainly don’t want to be responsible for the RSI of a sales-person or PR I don’t even remember having met. I doubt they remember me either.

Next, cards from friends and neighbours, ranked in order of how close a friend or how friendly a neighbour. Cards which contain nothing but a signature – not even my name – follow the corporate bunch into the recycling bag. Cards with anything more get a second look. My old editor always takes the time to write a proper note. I love receiving it, though it makes me feel guilty for the scribble I send in return.

I never throw away those cards which show pictures from a year in the sender’s life. I know some people find round robins and family portraits cringe-worthy, but I love them. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have children of my own, who might have suffered by comparison to the shiny haired, straight-toothed children of my lucky friends.

Cards actually written by those shiny haired youngsters also always make the cut. The correspondence I have from my nephews and godchildren is priceless, providing as accurate a picture of their growing up as school photographs. To begin with, the cards are written by their parents, the child’s signature a cross mark from a crayon held in a chubby fist. By five, they are wielding pencils and tackling their own names. By 10 beautiful handwriting emerges. Little doodles in the margins of my nephew’s notes show his evolution as an artist. He’s studying fine art at university now. I joke that his “thank you” cards will keep his auntie in old age.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course I will keep the card from a friend who has recently turned 101. Another friend, now in her late nineties, is increasingly beset by dementia. She can’t always remember what she had for lunch but in her letters she is still the articulate woman I first met, fully aware of what is going on and somehow better able to describe the experience of her current day-to-day in writing than on the phone. “Don’t get old,” she exhorts me in her elegant cursive.

There can be something profoundly melancholy about handwriting. My dad didn’t usually write Christmas and birthday cards. Mum performed that duty for both of them. She has wonderful handwriting, with big calligraphic sweeps. Dad’s handwriting was less easy to read at first glance. He was naturally left-handed but forced to use his right hand at school. I wonder how his writing might have looked had he been allowed to play to his strengths. He could draw anything. He was a talented engineer and an enthusiastic inventor.

What I have of my dad’s handwriting now is mostly lists. At the time of writing, they would have been utterly mundane, but they have taken on a sort of Zen significance. Swapping over the calendars at Mum’s on the January 1st after Dad’s death, I discovered that he had already made in-roads into the new year, dotting the pages with appointments that would never be kept. To see his writing unexpectedly made me catch my breath.

I keep a scrap of paper in my wallet. It’s a page torn from a small notebook given away by Currys, the electrical goods store. I found it in the glove compartment of Dad’s car when I was clearing it out to be sold. At the bottom of the page are the words “Whatever Happens”. Above them, my dad has written “WD-40”. Obviously it was a shopping list but it’s not bad advice either. WD-40 can fix almost everything: locks, hinges… I seem to remember even squirting WD-40 on the soles of my ballroom dancing shoes to give the perfect combination of grip and slip.

I’m sure if Dad had known the eventual significance of that scrap of paper, he might have written something more profound upon it, but that little note never fails to cheer me. Those few scant letters in Dad’s hand move me as much as hearing the only recording of his voice we have left – a 20-second video taken on my nephew’s phone.

Thinking about that note from Dad makes it harder than ever to throw away last year’s Christmas cards. A signature in blobby biro can be every bit as evocative as a photograph. Perhaps I will make those parcel tags next Christmas after all.