Greetings!
Bits and bobs of news
I had the flu jab last week, and as a result I felt like I had the flu. Indeed, at first I thought I did have the flu: aching muscles, nausea, terrible tiredness. It was like Tommy Cooper’s visit to Margate (a seaside resort) for rheumatism:
(go to 15:58 if it doesn’t do so automatically)
But then I realised that it was just the flu jab. Even so, I felt too rotten to do any sax playing. I even missed the weekly lesson. So, no tooting my horn at all last week, sadly.
After I’d had the jab I hopped on a train to central London to meet up with
. We had a very nice time, chatting about lots of things over coffees. Alicia asked some random lady if she would take a picture of us. For some reason she took eight! Here’s one of them:
It was taken on Waterloo Bridge. I was delighted when Alicia messaged me to say she was going to be in London for a week, and could we meet up? She writes really nicely, with a good balance of humour and confronting the angst engendered by modern life. Here’s her most recent post:
In other news, I changed the currency on my newsletter from £ to $. It’s made a big difference to the special offer I created: I think the $ price is now $15 for the year, and for Brits it works out to £11.70, which is less than £1 a month. The offer ends on Friday. Here’s the link:
https://terryfreedman.substack.com/xmas25
My course, The 60 Minute Writer, which is online, is now half full, which I’m quite pleased about. I wrote about it here.
On the subject of writing,
has a brilliant article on how to show not tell.Inside Freedman Towers
We met a friend of one of Elaine’s friends. The person we met is a police officer. She’d been talking about some sex case that was in the papers:
Police officer: What is it with men? All they think about is sex. It’s pathetic.
Me: I think you’re completely misconstruing our motivation. Our sole concern is the propagation of the species. In fact, so dedicated are we to the cause that it doesn’t matter how ugly —
At this point we both collapsed laughing!
~~
We popped into the vet’s yesterday to get some tablets for the cats.
Me to Receptionists: Elaine needs to be wormed.
Elaine: Yes, why not announce that to the whole world?
Me: And de-fleeing.
Receptionists: 🤣😂
Me: This is why she keeps me on: for the entertainment value!
What we’re watching
A series called Bodies, which turns out to be a time travel story.
What I’m reading
I’m about to start on Craftland, which I think sounds really interesting.
I recently read and reviewed Tradecraft, about John Le Carrés writing practice, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, and The Queen’s Atlas, which is about William Caxton’s mapping the whole of England: Three book reviews.
Articles you may have missed
Experiments in style: computer-generated version
Behind the computer-generated version
A great post about observing people on the bus, from
And I enjoyed this post by
: I cleaned my car today.Well, that’s it from me for now. I shall be writing a letter in reply to
soon. We write a letter to each other on Wednesdays.Thanks for reading, and do upgrade if you’ve been thinking about it, because of the special offer I mentioned:
Special offer: 70% discount on annual plan
For one week only (well, ten days if we’re being pernickety), I’m reducing the price of a 12 month subscription by a massive 70%. In English currency that makes it £15 rather than £50, for the annual plan only. If you would like to take advantage of this, use this link:
Thanks again,
Terry
Thank you, Terry for the wee shout out here. And for the grand photo of you in that fine orange shirt. Seasonably appropriate and... ahem.. handsome!
What a fabulous update! I'm new to your 'Start the week' - thanks for making me smile. And thanks for the shout out, too. Very touched! Hope the flu (jab effect) is behind you now and the rest of the week is a buzzy as the start.