Letter to Rebecca #24-22

Opera, a paradox, chortles and more persiflage

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your letter.

Monopoly

How can you have played Monopoly without really intending to win? The whole point of the game is to bring out one’s inner J. R. Ewing¹. Once, when I was teaching, I had a small group of students in my class, literally just 4. One day I wanted to teach them about wealth and income distribution, and how hard it can be to achieve a more equal situation. To this end, we played Monopoly — but with some important differences. Only one player was allowed to play in the normal way. He represented the lower middle class, someone who can gradually get richer by investing wisely in property. One person was given Mayfair and Park Lane and several houses and hotels to start with. He represented someone with inherited wealth. Someone else was given £500 each time they passed Go. He represented the upper middle class, earning a decent income. Finally, one was not allowed to buy any property at all. He was allowed to have £200 each time he passed Go, but he ended up spending it all on rent before he’d got halfway around the board. He represented the unemployed, subsisting on benefits. After a while he became so angry that he got hold of the board and threw it across the room, thereby illustrating the Marxian theory of worker revolution.

Dictator literature

Well done for solving my six-word review: They dictate, but they can’t write!

The writing featured is truly dreadful, especially some dictators’ attempts at novel-writing. Kalder’s comments are often hilarious, such as:

Castro’s gift for extemporisation also led to the generation of a ‘memoir’ of Che Guevara which is interesting only insofar as how uninteresting it manages to be.

Elsewhere he states that the best thing about a 50 page book by one of the dictators is that you can read it quickly.

Blue soup

Thanks for the Bridget Jones clips, which were eggsellent.

Tabloidese

Thank you for your suggestion of writing a tabloidese version of A Bang on the Head in my Experiments in Style series², and for your examples. I’ve thought of that before, but so far I have not progressed beyond a couple of headlines:

Famous wordsmith in hospital drama.

World-acclaimed writer in mask feud.

What do you think?

Online Recipes

We find that they always seem to require at least one ingredient that no normal person would have. It always reminds me of the time I took my then girlfriend out for dinner in an Indian restaurant.

“Do you like the herbs?”, enquired the owner.

“Oh yes”, we replied.

“I picked them myself from the eastern slopes of the Himalayas. They have only a very short growing season.”

That’s what I say on the rare occasions I concoct a meal.

My letters

I’m glad you liked my letter about unicorn slices, and I thought ‘Made without tiger rolls’ hilarious. Thanks for sharing it.

On the subject of letters, I once had a letter published in a teen girls’ magazine called Petticoat. I hasten to say that I didn’t buy it myself, but would leaf through my sister’s copy for a laugh. It contained articles like “How to know when it’s the right time for your first kiss”, and how to put on false eyelashes. So I wrote to them along the lines of:

Not only did they publish it, I seem to recall that they made it the Letter of the Week. (I should have received £1 but didn’t.) A girl responded by saying that I was a poor misguided person and that as far as she knew acne wasn’t regarded as a beauty asset. She rounded it off by saying that if girls discarded their make-up and presented themselves as they are, the male population would be the first to complain³.

The weather in London

The weather here is nuts, as usual. Frinstance, this morning it was bright sunshine, lovely and warm, but by the afternoon there was a huge grey cloud and no warmth. Saturday saw torrential rain. It tends to rain only when I go out.

Mr Snaps

As I said in a comment, I didn’t know Jim was called Mr Snaps. Doesn’t that mean you should be called Miss Crackle & Pop? I used to love Rice Crispies, Ricicles, Cornflakes, Frosties and Shreddies. Now I have to eat sensible stuff, because my body is a temple.

I was reading yesterday of a woman who wants to live to 150. In order to accomplish this goal, she gets up at 5am and measures her weight, fat mass, bone density. Then she scrapes her tongue. After that, she uses her Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy device, followed by meditation, followed by a visit to her gym, after which it’s time for a sauna, then a light meal, 20 supplements, quarterly blood treatments (she has the blood taken out of her gums, swished around, and then injected back in) etc etc and then bed at 8:30, having gone for a walk in the sunset in order to ‘advise’ her body that it’s time for sleep. As someone in the comments said, it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t live to 150 because with that boring lifestyle it will feel like it anyway. Someone else said exactly what I was thinking: just think of what a waste it will all have been if she ends up being run over by a bus.

I was on a Transcental Meditation residential course once. The trouble with T.M., and, I imagine, every other kind of meditation, is that some people just make up their own rules. Like a T.M. group somewhere in the world which decided that carrots are not good for spiritual development because they grow in the ground. One of Maharishi’s senior people went over to visit them. They were really honoured, and asked him what food he liked to eat. He ordered carrot juice, carrot soup, stewed carrots and carrot cake. I’ve never been able to ascertain whether or not that story is true; I hope it is.

Anyway, on this course I went on there was a couple who were very strict about – well, everything. They didn’t speak unless it was essential, which category didn’t include “Good morning” or other such pleasantries. They held their hands over their food to check whether the vibrations were right. They went to bed at 8pm. I don’t think I’ve ever met such humourless, miserable-looking people in my life.

Pavlova Rotty

Do you like opera, Becks? I never used to like it, but around a year or so ago I started to really like it. I mean having Messy Dormer blasting out at full volume kind of liking it. I especially like The Margarine of Figaro, Toaster, and the Barbarian of Seville. I haven’t heard Salami, but I also like the Magic Flotsam.

A paradox

Here’s a puzzle for you: In Seville, the barber shaves only people who do not shave themselves. The question is, does the barber shave himself?

Smoking

Have you ever smoked? I used to but having given up decades ago I have become very sensitive to it. I was having a latte in the open air bit of a cafe yesterday, slowly freezing because as it was glorious weather and I had a few errands to run and an article to write I loaded up my bike and sallied forth, but had been sorely misled because by the time I sat down with my drink the sky clouded over and a cold wind started blowing. Where was I? Oh yes, I was sitting there and suddenly I started coughing. I looked around and there was a human chimney a few tables away. It was like being near Puffing Billy.

Years ago I had to visit a school I’d taught in at one time. Outside there was Brian, with whom I used to tackle the crossword. I hadn’t seen him for twenty years. He was smoking. The conversation went like this.

Brian: Hello, Tel. Wanna fag⁴?

Me: No thank you. I got engaged, and she told me that she could never live with a smoker, so I gave up.

Brian: Wrong choice.

And on that note, Becks, I shall love you and leave you.

Terry

To anyone reading this missive, you can see the whole archive here. Rebecca should reply next Wednesday, so make sure you don’t miss that by subscribing to hers.

Thanks for reading!

1. A fictional ruthless character in the TV series Dallas.

2. Which has now reached 81 versions. Woo hoo!

3. For what it’s worth, that was never true in my case.

4. Slang for a cigarette.