Letter to Rebecca #24-06

Illness, tea, fake photos, Jane Austen, literal interpretation, persiflage

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your recent epistle. Before I go any further, may I just say that if people can’t comment on this post, I’ve probably accidentally made the comments open to paid subscribers only, like I did last time. If that’s the case, they can let me know in the comments. Oh, hang on… 🤔

The next thing I should like to say, in order to enlist your sympathy in the hope of causing you to think twice or more before hurling your usual jibes and insults my way, that I have been rather poorly. Someone we heard of had this chest infection for two months! Someone I know had it for four weeks. I’m now in my fourth week and it has almost gone. Almost. Here’s a photo to prove what a dilapidated state I’m in, a mere shadow of my former vibrant, vital self, doomed to be an outcast from the realms of healthy society:

Terry and his girlfriend, by Terry Freedman

I’m not sure why, but my face in that picture looks blue, even though I used a green pen.

In your letter you said:

“It was years before I discovered that ‘the sorting office’ was a large building located on a busy industrial estate in our nearest town rather than a Dr Who’s Tardis-like cave directly beneath every pillarbox.”

Wait! You mean that isn’t the case??

As we’ve both been reading Jane Austen, and you have even been to the Austen museum, I thought you might appreciate the quote from one of her letters (below). Funnily enough, I’d been reading about Austen’s size and clothing a few days before your post came out. As I think you said, she was very slim (US size 2) but also very tall, so she must have been like a lamppost. She had to make all her own clothes or have them made by a dressmaker, and as they became worn out she would repurpose them into a different item of clothing. In one of her letters she wrote:

“I cannot determine what to do about my new Gown; I wish such things were to be bought ready made.”

That was in, I believe, 1799, and ready-to-wear clothing for women didn’t become widely available in England for another hundred years.

I don’t know about you, but I often think about how easy life is for us compared to even, say, fifty years ago: ready meals, affordable freezers, microwaves, travel. But it had never occurred to me how much easier life is now that we can just walk into a shop and select something to wear off a rail, or even by ordering online.

Incidentally, the information about Austen’s clothing, size and letter came from Kathryn Hughes’ New York Review of Books review of Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, by Hilary Davidson, Yale University Press, 2023.

Changing the subject…

You said:

“Terry, the camera never lies….”

Seriously? Look at this faked pic of my mum and dad. They didn’t look like that at all!

Terry’s mum and dad, by unknown photographer

Your conversation in Germany made me laugh:

‘Pardon?’ he replied. ‘Do you mean that you’re seeking to get a sore throat?’

That reminds me of Tommy Cooper and his joke about Margate¹: (The video should start at the relevant bit, but if not go to 15 minutes and 57 seconds.)

So you ran out of tea bags? That shows to me that you are not a serious tea drinker. We always have enough tea, with even boxes of tea bags on stand-by, just in case. We take the view that you never know when the British army is going to drop in.

Mind you, we did almost run out tea a few months ago. However, we rescued the situation just in time. It took me ages to cease being emotionally traumatised by the experience. In fact, even thinking about it now has caused me to have one of my turns, so I’m off to have a lie down.

Look after yourself, Becks.

Terry

Anyone reading this letter can expect Rebecca to reply next week, assuming she’s managed to make up for her tea deprivation in time. To make sure you don’t miss that, subscribe to her newsletter:

And to mine!

1. A seaside resort in England.