Calendars

Every year, we are sent more calendars than we can use. There is little demand from family and friends for any of the unneeded copies. I do keep a calendar in my office, because it is helpful to know on what day of the week some future event or appointment will take place. However, when we refer to "the calendar" we usually mean the engagement book supplied by our stockbroker. This is a vital part of our life, a "calendar" in which we enter dates and times of future engagements, from medical appointments to classical music concerts. It is rare indeed for us to forget to attend a play or a concert, thanks to the.calendar. I have one small gripe: the timing of the arrival of the next year's issue. Morgan Stanley, our stockbroker's firm, seems to regard distribution of those excellent engagement books as a sort of Christmas present. Of course, we would like to receive them several months in advance, so that we can enter our engagements for the first few months of the coming year. Instead, we make use of a page at the back of the earlier year. When the new book arrives, the first thing that I do is to transfer those items into the newly-arrived book. Somehow I manage not to complain about the delayed arrival, as those engagement books (our "calendars") are a very important part of our lives.