Reply to Rebecca #24

Back on track

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your recent letter. I cannot begin to tell you how pleased I was to see that normal numbering has been resumed. As I am fond of saying, there are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can’t, and you are clearly in the latter category.

Permit me to have a brief pause in my insults to ask you something very important. I have started re-reading Northanger Abbey. While addressing Catherine, one of the characters says that he would like her to put the following in her “journal”:

“[I met] a very agreeable young man… [ and] had a great deal of conversation with him — seems a most extraordinary genius”

I was wondering if that is what you wrote in your secret diary after meeting me. And if not, why not?

Now, while you are cogitating on that question and how to answer it, I shall endeavour to answer your questions:

“Do they [the cats] not have cosy quarters – I don’t know – indoors?”

Indeed they do. They loaf about on the settee, the back of the settee, armchairs, tables and even music:

Mocha studying music — photo by Terry Freedman

Anyway, to prove that I do listen to you, I have freed the cats from their pony and trap obligations, sold the trap, and upgraded a bit:

Lord Mayor’s carriage in Guildhall, London — photo by Terry Freedman

“I was dismayed to learn that you’d once found a dead mouse while you were in the process of putting your shoes on. Please reassure me that the creature had been dead before the application of your foot?”

Of course! I am such a softy that I try my hardest to rescue mice and birds from the clutches of our resident psychopaths. I even rescued a baby rat once. (In case you’re wondering, we are very clean, but sometimes rats come along from fields at the back of the house.)

“Leaving aside the fact that you clearly ought to frequent tea rooms rather than coffee shops – because the clue’s in the name, Terry – if you are hanging about in dodgy joints where the existence of the teapot, tea strainer and sugar tongs have passed the proprietors by, you have no-one to blame but yourself.”

Listen. When I am out and about, nothing can beat a nice latté made with full fat milk in a nice café, preferably outdoors. I mean, have a look at this:

A latté — photo by Terry Freedman

See? There’s even a nice pattern in it. That’s because the young lady who served me fancied me. “OMG, it’s that famous writer”, she gasped before swooning.

But I cannot exist without tea, and the story of that 107 year-old lady who swears by it is cause for great hope. I’d quite like to live to 100 myself, mainly because it’s on my to-do list.

As for so-called Quik Tea, how is that stuff even legal? Which reminds me of a hilarious review of a restaurant I read in 2003. The review said that if the soup he’d ordered had been found in a canister in the Iraqi desert the search for weapons of mass destruction would be over. The restaurant owner was so offended that he threatened to sue the reviewer, who described the restaurant as the eighth circle of hell. Anyway, getting back to that “tea”, what kind of friend is

Mary B

to send you something like that? What did you do to upset her?

“A chum of my former boss used to keep a manilla envelope taped to his desk for the sole purpose of comparing its colour to the shade of tea in the bone china cup of tea delivered by his harried secretary three times a day.”

This is an excellent idea, but my method is better I think. I always tap the side of the cup with a spoon.

Elaine: Why do you do that? To see if it’s brewed?

Me: Correct. If it has brewed properly then we should hear a lovely pure tone. I think it’s Middle C.

Regarding GMT, I remember trying to organise an online meeting with several people, including a professor, and none of us could work out what the correct time would be. Most of us managed to appear on time in the end thanks to the world time converter I shared in advance, but the professor turned up an hour late and another person arrived an hour early!

Well, here we are in Puddlegate season again. Thank you for giving me that rubber duck to test the depth of the water. It came in really handy. This was the first sign of the reappearance of the puddle:

Puddle at bus stop — photo by Terry Freedman

For people who are new to this phenomenon, it is simply that before my council improved the pavement near the bus stop there was never any accumulation of water. After the improvement the place started to resemble Lake Superior.

This is what the puddle looks like now. Note the rubber duck you gave me floating on the surface:

The puddle — photo by Terry Freedman

Finally, I think it’s time we did some lit crit. I’ve recently been reading short stories by the Irish writer Claire Keegan. I like the “spare-ness” of her writing, but have to say I found some of the dropping of clues or allusions a bit like being hit over the head with a hammer. I thought the first version of So Late in the Day, as it appeared in the New Yorker, much better than the revised version, especially the ending.

The men in her stories are pretty awful specimens, and I have to say I find the seemingly-constant man-bashing by certain female writers rather tedious, if not downright puerile, arrogant and unpleasant. As for the women in her stories, a couple in particular, in the story Love In The Tall Grass, were so wet. One of them waits ten years for a married bloke, and his wife knows that he’s playing away but doesn’t boot him out. Good grief. Contrast that with the wife in the story Men and Women, who really put her waste-of-space husband in his place. Boy, was that a satisfying ending.

I hope I’ve whetted your appetite for Keegan stories if you haven’t yet read any.

As I said at the start of this epistle, I’ve gone back to Jane Austen. Fantastic! So humorous, so well-observed.

And how about you, Rebecca. What have you been reading, and what are your thoughts on it?

Finally, I found this notice in Westleton, Suffolk, UK, rather charming:

Donations welcome — photo by Terry Freedman

To anyone who has virtually steamed open this letter, catch up with Rebecca’s reply (next Wednesday) by subscribing to her newsletter now. Rebecca muses about getting lost, getting books in plain wrappers (I’ve met her sort before¹), and getting old.

Dear Reader, I'm lost

I hope you’ve enjoyed this chortlefest. Do leave a comment or two.

1. OK, just to clarify, these are mystery books in charity shops.