Letter to Rebecca #10

Puddlegate, potholes and persiflage

Apr 12, 2023

Dear Rebecca

I hope you don’t mind but I have decided to use headings in this letter, to make it easier for you to revisit your favourite bits, link to them, quote them to friends and relatives, or whatever else. It will also help future biographers to do a half decent job of chronicling my life, which will clearly be of benefit to students of the future.

The above paragraph is just one example of the sort of gripping prose that graduates of my Advanced Drivelling Course are able to produce at the drop of a hat. To quote from the email I sent you about it, here is the advertising copy, although I think ChatGPT might do a better job:

“I feel so humbled by the fact that this afternoon I wrote three very different variations of my 'bang on the head' story, scheduled to go out tomorrow morning at 10:30 for the benefit of my eager fans, whom I feel so honoured to know how much they appreciate my genius.”

My advanced drivelling course will teach you:

how to witter on in a similar vein for hours
how to take charge of every conversation while saying little or nothing of consequence
how to turn the creation of persiflage into a fine art

All this, and you get a badge too, to proudly display everywhere.

Reply to this email for further details, and to take advantage of my special eezey-pay deal: pay only 1% interest a day using our bespoke credit plan.

Never feel lost for words again! Advanced drivelling. You know it makes sense.

Planning and Scheduling

Thank you very much for your recent letter. I’m sorry to hear that my tardiness has caused you to completely rewrite your carefully crafted, handwritten publishing schedule, but I think there are two lessons to be learnt from this.

An obvious one is to abandon planning altogether. Get in touch with your inner hippy, and just take it easy, man.

As you love planning, and even plan when you’re going to do your planning, and no doubt not only have lists but have a list of all the lists you’ve made (I know I do – I even have lists in the form of check boxes), I realise that letting it all hang out, so to speak, would be anathema to you. Therefore I suggest: ditch the old-school, quill pen and parchment, analogue approach and use a spreadsheet (like the planning sheet I shared on my own Substack). If you used a spreadsheet,, or even a plain old Word or Docs document, reordering the schedule would take minutes, or even seconds. Therefore I’m afraid I can take no responsibility for all your drafting and redrafting. In the immortal words of a delivery man who had come to collect a computer for repair but turned up with a box far too small, “Ain’t my problem, mate.”.

On that occasion I phoned the company I bought the computer from and asked them if they were aware that the delivery company they used had a new mission statement (the aforementioned problem-denial remark). They gave me a new computer.

Puddlegate

Your duck seems quite friendly. How did you put him or her onto the photograph? It made me laugh. Thank you for enquiring about the situation at our local bus stop. Things have deteriorated somewhat, as you can see from this recent sketch I made while waiting for a bus:

A whale passing by the bus stop — by Terry Freedman

Potholes

Why is the PM worrying about potholes? Do you remember John Major’s cones hotline? I know potholes are important, but is the issue so important that it has to be addressed by the Prime Minister?

Of course not. Therefore I think it has been misreported. What Mr Sunak actually meant was pot holes: holes where you can store your pots. Mind you, I’m not sure why he would concern himself with that either, but still.

I was reading today that Arnold Schwarzenegger got a few people together and a bucket of cement and filled in a gigantic pothole himself. Now that’s the sort of community spirit we like.

The weather

Glad the weather is becoming clement over at Holden Heights. We have special weather here at Freedman Towers. It is just sunny and windy enough to make hanging out washing worthwhile, and then when we have done so, or when the clothes are virtually dry, the heavens open. This has occurred because we moaned about the weather last summer, when it was unbearably hot. The local god of the weather is saying, in effect, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it, ingrates.”. It is karma, quite clearly.

Today, though, I hung out some washing because the weather was clement, sunny with just a hint of a breeze. Having secured the drier with my (patent-pending) 4-chair solution Elaine and I went for an amble around the local park. Just as we were nearing home, a ten force gale started blowing. When Elaine shrieked “Oh my god” I knew the news wasn’t good. The chairs had been blown all around the garden, while the drier had convoluted itself in such a way that every item of washing, which was dry by then, was on the ground.

Just as I finished gathering in the washing and straightening the chairs, the clouds burst — but I was indoors by that time.

“Ha!”, I shouted at the sky. “You’ll have to do better than that!”

We have an indoor heated drier which takes ages to dry anything, but which we keep as it acts as a kind of under-floor heating system for the two feline princesses. This photo was taken earlier today:

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger — The heated drier is to the cats’ liking — photo by Terry Freedman

Note how much regard these miscreants have to the fact that ten seconds before this photo was taken those towels were clean, because we put them on a quick rinse after the wind-in-the-garden excitement. Mocha is on top, Minty is in the middle. The newspaper on top is for the cats’ comfort, as is everything else in our house now.

Maps

Thank you for your kind words about my map. I enjoyed creating it. It seemed to me a different way of capturing a lot of information while conveying to people the idea of where various activities took place. I thoroughly recommend doing it. It’s also good for memory-jogging about what you were doing where, and in which part of the day.

Clock-watching

I agree with you about time to kill. I never have enough time to do everything I’d like to do. I want more time, not to kill the time I have!

Sam Pepys

Yes, I do know Sam Pepys. We went to school together. We walked.

(Nighttime) diaries

I’d never heard of a noctuary. However sometimes, like many writers and non-writers, I have a notebook next to my bed in case I have a flash of inspiration during the night. Some people have a notebook and pen handy so that they can write down their dreams before they forget them. You have a notebook handy too, you say. I wonder if such notes would count as a noctuary. I suppose they would.

On the subject of publishing one’s diary, mine would be of little interest I daresay. It’s just full of meetings and reminders to do things, plus some ideas for articles and books to read and write. I find it vaguely interesting to note that on, say, 3rd March 1990 I was having a meeting with the headteacher, but I can’t imagine that sort of thing would fire up anyone else. Have you ever read “Diary of a Nobody”? It’s full of mundane stuff that is humorous precisely because it is all so boring and inconsequential. Well my diary would be like a sequel, but even less interesting.

Do you keep a diary, Rebecca? Are you of the same mind as Lady Bracknell, that is thinking it’s important to have something sensational to read on the train?

A friend of mine, my best friend in fact, well actually my only friend, well, more of an acquaintance really, keeps a diary. If I say to him “Do you remember when we saw Status Quo?” he will say “Oh yes, it was on the 7th August 1982, and you fancied a girl called Angela”. Amazing.

Reading

I always have several books on the go so that I have one to hand to suit whatever mood I’m in. I like book titles. Like the one you mentioned, A Town Called Solace. While I was trawling through the Freedman archives I came across the beginnings of a short story I penned, called Deadly At Midnight. I wrote it in 1988, when I was living in a place called – I’d better not say, in case their local tourist board sue me for defamation, although I’m pretty sure you can’t defame a town. . Should you wish to read it (again – thanks for commenting), it’s here: Deadly at midnight.

Substack Notes

You know the old saying, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em? Well, I succumbed and have published a Note and “restacked” a comment I made. In the first, I added to the general noise and chaos that is the internet these days. However, I actually think the restacking thing is potentially useful. For example, I made a comment on someone’s ‘stack a few days ago and thought perhaps I could use it to start a discussion or an article in its own right. I think the restacking button makes it easy to publish a note consisting of the comment, along with an indication of what it was a comment on. I think I might experiment a bit more with that.

Cats

You were asking about our cats. I’ll give the full story another time, but we have three. Willow, who is an elderly gentleman but still acts like a teenager, and two female felines called Minty and Mocha, whom I introduced earlier in this letter. Minty and I were going to elope together but then I discovered that she has a nice line in heavier-than-air farts. You can be sitting on the sofa, and watch Minty stroll out of the room. Ten minutes later you realise that you are being enveloped by a noxious gas that has take ages to travel just three feet. You begin to regret not having got around to updating your Last Will and Testament.

Mocha is nice but she has a wet nose, and likes rubbing noses. I know where her nose has been, and it is not pleasant. Also, she eats so much that we call her Dyson. The food doesn’t even touch the sides.

Willow is good fun. Last year I had this telephone conversation with the vet practice we use:

Vet practice: Good morning, Vet Practice here.
Me: Good morning. That’s Rachel isn’t it? How are you?
VP: Yes. I’m fine thanks. You?
Me: Bearing up under the heavy load, thank you.
VP: How’s Elaine?
Me: Oh she’s ok too thanks. Anyway, I’ve been sent a notification about flea treatment and worming.
VP: That’s right. We have an appointment on the 3rd at 11 am. Would that suit?
Me: Definitely.
VP: Lovely. That’s all booked in for you.
Me: Great. Well that’s Elaine sorted out. Now I need to make an appointment for Willow.

We both fell about laughing.

When I took Willow in, I had this conversation:

Me to nurse: This is my brother.
Nurse: Yes, I can see the likeness.

A tad worrying, no? I wonder where she did her training.

But enough of this persiflage. I look forward to receiving your reply, and if anyone else reading this wishes to read our previous and future correspondence here are the relevant links.

Rebecca’s letters to me: