Three jeers for the round robin! While most of us groan when they arrive and swear that we wish these people wouldn't insist on keeping in touch, what would we do without them? We would be reduced to chortling at the naffest Christmas card we'd received so far. At the very least, we ought also to admire the way the writers manage to keep track. I'd love to know what I have been doing in the past 12 months. Right now I wouldn't be able to name the high points or the low points. Was it March or July I had the bad back? What was the name of the place we went where it rained? If someone sent me a round robin of my past year it would be really helpful. It would also be fascinating to see how this annual report is produced. Maybe it's written by just one member of the family (let's call her Mrs Wilkinson); and in secret, because she has had enough of the protests of her children, Charlotte (nine) and Christopher (15), who think it's embarrassing, and her husband, Adrian, who is not interested. She sits at the keyboard in the basement of their recently redecorated house (see Wilkinson newsletter 2010) surrounded by the trophies Charlotte has won for archery and judo, the skateboard responsible for Christopher's accident in March, the shrivelled remains of the Christmas poinsettia - which survived for a record four months this year - the corpse of the washing machine that broke down, almost hilariously, in July, and, of course, the souvenir programme from the birthday trip to see Les Misérables. Does she have a picture in mind of the people she is writing to? Those nice people they met on holiday in Florence, or the people next door but one who moved away in 1999, or the cousins in Canada? Is she tempted to embellish, to borrow an incident that happened to someone else, to invent a family dog, to throw in a medical emergency, just to stop it appearing too smug? Those cousins in Canada are hardly likely to show up on the doorstep and discover the truth. Maybe the round robin is a joint effort by Family Wilkinson. Perhaps they have regular planning meetings. February is looking a bit thin at the moment, so Charlotte will have to take up the lute then. Is Christopher's girlfriend worth a mention? She would add some interest in September if he's still seeing her. Tell him to stick at it, be nicer to her. Does she have any interesting hobbies or achievements, by the way? Mrs Wilkinson would like to do some descriptive writing, so they must take the family holiday somewhere with mountains. They worry about the circulation of the newsletter. It's falling steadily. Too many of the recipients have moved house and have curiously failed to leave a forwarding address. Maybe Mrs Wilkinson's account of her pottery lessons (see newsletter 2001) was the last straw for them and they just took off. Or perhaps it was her rather overwritten paean to Pilates in 2003. Somebody actually tore up that particular newsletter and returned it in tiny pieces. Investigations into the identity of that person are still ongoing. Something sensational is needed to revive the circulation. It looks like Mother is going to have to have a fall in the bath, or we'll have to go big on Adrian's prostate. Christopher is letting the side down; not many achievements, not really doing that much. Perhaps when Charlotte takes up the lute... but we could say it was Christopher. After all, she still has the oboe that dates back to the 2006 newsletter. Mrs Wilkinson suggests there's a danger they might appear too pleased with themselves, so Adrian must volunteer to have a comical accident involving DIY. But Christopher says the whole thing is ridiculous and this year's round robin must be ironic. It's the new thing, he explains. They must be jokey and send themselves up. But Mrs Wilkinson doesn't think the Canadians appreciate irony. She always has a paragraph beginning "On a brighter note..." and needs some suggestions, but the cat's neutering doesn't fit the bill. Charlotte has to leave the family meeting early because she has a riding lesson. As we stamp around the sitting room waving Mrs Wilkinson's latest effort, denouncing goody-goody little Charlotte and surly Christopher, threatening to attack Adrian with his grouting tool and wishing we could throw Mrs Wilkinson's record-breaking poinsettia at her head, we are likely to complain that it is all so trivial. That is the point, of course. It's not an epic family drama; it's not Downton Abbey or EastEnders. It's a load of good old British minutiae. It's a collection of the tiny details that make up people's idea of their family life - or what they want their family life to look like. Someone could bury all our 2012 newsletters in a time capsule, to tell people in 200 years" time about Charlotte's triumphs, the washing machine disasters, the proficiency certificates and the pet mishaps, and people would probably marvel at them. Just for now, however, they give us a few moments of harmless fun, and December would be greyer without them. So, good for the Wilkinsons and all those other families like them, gathered at their personal computer keyboards. Whether they are smug, thick-skinned or blithely unaware of the distant laughter, let them stick at it, year after year, churning out their tales of Duke of Edinburgh Awards, weddings of people we have never heard of, sunsets in the Seychelles, new cars, promotions at work and amusing incidents with a tin opener. I say: "Hands off that robin!"