Letter to Rebecca #24-23

Vets, pets, and rules of the game, plus a bunch of other stuff

Every other week, Rebecca and I write to each other here, which is quite daft if you think about it. I mean, we could just email each other, which would be a lot faster. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, my latest reply to hers.

Dear Rebecca

Thanks for your letter. Sorry for taking a week’s leave of absence from these epistolary chortlefests, but last week things were rather fraught. Minty, was unwell, and it turns out she was suffering from asthma. We have to wait a few weeks to see if it’s permanent. Fortunately, the vet doesn’t think it’s cancer.

More pet and vet-related stuff

Speaking of vets, Elaine has made an appointment for worming treatment on Thursday. I was thinking of having the cats done at the same time.

Those malingerers. We were trying to get rid of a rodent last week. The reason we got these three layabouts in the first place, apart from the fact that we are mugs and we wanted to experience what it was like to hurtle towards bankruptcy, was to keep rodents out. These were the responses to our entreaties to help. From top to bottom, Willow, Minty, Mocha.

Big brother is watching your shopping

So Ocado knew that your house needs a good clean. Consider yourself fortunate. When loyalty cards first appeared, supermarkets used consumers’ buying habits to work out when they were pregnant. That would have been intrusive enough, but then they started sending offers of maternity products to the household — and sometimes the lady concerned hadn’t yet told her husband or partner.

That weather forecast

Regarding the BBC’s weather forecast, you said: “If you look closely at the black circles you’ll see that the wind speed in Edinburgh was showing as 17,246mph”. So what’s your point then, Becks? Scotland is known for its fierce winds. Why do you think nobody lives on St Kilda any more? Why do you think that every week in the series called Shetland, someone gets murdered? It’s the wind. It makes people go loopy. If anything, I’d say a wind speed of 17,246 mph is an underestimate. But look on the bright side. It would have been even higher if they’d have used kph instead of mph: 27754.747, in fact.

Games people play

You appear to have not liked my extending of Monopoly to illustrate important social and economic phenomena. As it happens, subverting games was one of my USPs as a teacher. For example, I used Sim City as a way of having the students see the possible political consequences of economic decisions, and I changed the rules of a simulation called Running the Economy to illustrate particular economic outcomes. I shall write about that one of these days.

Going back to Monopoly, I did attempt to pay for a school dinner once using Monopoly money, but the dinner lady noticed. That was in my first job as an Economics teacher. I felt it was important to point out the need to be alert to the circulation of counterfeit currency.

Bits and pieces

You ask me about keeping snippets to use in writing. It’s a real problem, no doubt about that. I’ve tried lots of things, but my current methods are:

• Wakelet, which is a free online app that lets you copy and paste text, website addresses and other stuff into different collections;

• labels, in Gmail, allow me to send myself links to articles I might find useful to refer to in an article, because I can ‘label’ my email as, for instance, Substack;

• box files, for keeping newspaper cuttings and other stuff I’ve come across that I’d like to refer to at some point;

• and, finally, a folder on Google Drive, into which I upload my own scanned articles and other examples of award-winning¹ literature.

Article writing

How do you write your articles? I mean, where do you get your ideas from? I am often sparked off by some piece of news or a street sign, but even more frequently by my own imagination, drawing on my experiences and the people I’ve come across. Only this morning I was writing an article in my head while walking around in a supermarket, which was a good way of building up my daily steps because I kept forgetting stuff and therefore had to keep revisiting aisles I’d already been up and down.

Progress

Living in London, where civilisation has progressed to the point where we have more than one street light², our libraries email out a pre-overdue notice. I received one the other day, listing four books, but I could find only three of them. After a few days looking for it, I girded my loins, whatever that means, and prepared to go to the library and pay for it. But before that I decided to take one last look at the email, whereupon I discovered that the book was an ebook. There you have it, Becks: I HAD BEEN SEARCHING FOR A NON-EXISTENT BOOK.

I have officially lost my last remaining marble, for which I blame Minty, who has caused us so much worry. So on that note I am going to have a lie down.

Bye for now

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. Strictly speaking, I have not won any awards for literature, unless you count one called ‘Blogger of the year’. This is because my genius has not yet been recognised by the people who dish out these awards.

2. … but where traffic speeds have decreased over the last 15 years. According to my research using Perplexity.ai, “traffic congestion levels in London today are remarkably similar to those experienced in the 19th century, despite significant technological advancements in transportation.” That’s progress for you.