103. A letter about Terry ✒️

Coffee, not tea, thanks.

Oct 18, 2023

Dear Reader,

In this temporary break from normal programming, instead of my bi-weekly letter to Terry Freedman I am this time writing to you about Terry Freedman. Or rather, about our recent meeting.

Terry had got in first with two - TWO! - accounts of his own about the time we’d spent together. I’m linking them right here at the start of this post, so that I can be sure to claim the last word. 😉

✒️ ‘…imagine how mortified I was when, in one of the most upmarket cafés Elaine and I could find, you suddenly whipped out a teabag.’

✒️ ‘We spent getting on for six hours in each other’s company, and most of that time was spent laughing.’

In a communication ahead of our date Terry had announced his intention to bring a bodyguard:

When it comes to our one year anniversary of writing these letters we could meet up in person. As my mother always warned me about strange women it would have to be in broad daylight, in a crowded place, and I’d need to have the venue inspected by my personal bodyguard in advance. Here he is:

Gosh, Terry was taking no chances. What’s more, in case I hadn't been listening the first time, he posted the following words the day before we were due to meet:

I will be accompanied by my bodyguard, just as a precaution.

It was time to reassure him that I had taken security measures of my own:

I’ll see your bodyguard and raise you an entourage….. ♠️♥️♦️♣️

The chauffeur1 in my entourage had decided that we’d take the van to London for our two-night stay. Given that Terry, Elaine and a unanimity of cats (thanks for nothing, Willow, Minty and Mocha) had proffered no invitation for us to pitch on the driveway of Freedman Towers, we’d had to find an actual campsite.

All had seemed well when we drove through the campsite gates, but on checking in at reception we spotted an alarming display. It seems the locals were renowned for both their predatory reputation and their kleptomaniac tendencies.

‘Don’t leave your shoes outside your van – the foxes will have them!’ we were told. ‘Well, one of them.’

I was horrified. Not about the presence of foxes per se, but if they were to steal my footwear they would need to take the pair. Take the shoes or don’t take the shoes – those were the only acceptable options in my book.

🙄

It didn’t take me long to establish why the campsite might have a problem with nocturnal creatures. This notice had been posted on the back of every cubicle door in the ladies’ shower block:

‘As an initiative to… encourage night-time wildlife… we have turned off the bollard lights.’

And then this, by the dustbins, right outside the shower block:

‘Please do not feed the foxes.’

Oh, come on! #it’snotrocketscience 👀

Next morning, on the bins themselves, two sorry shoe specimens had been left by way of example to any other footwear careless enough to be thinking about leaving themselves outside.

The online dating world is rightly concerned with safety, with participants warned about grooming and predatory behaviour. Those embarking on internet dating are encouraged if not to hunt in a pack then at the very least to have a friend on standby at the end of the phone for if things get unexpectedly tricky.

I neither wanted to groom anyone nor become anyone’s prey, but leaving our shoe-munching vulpine 🦊 friends aside, how was I going to approach my meeting with Terry?

I had noted from the alarming escalation in Terry’s pre-meeting memos that his anxiety surrounding his safety was equalled by his concern for my (in)ability to find my way around.

Here are some snippets from a conversation in the comments of one of Terry’s letters.

This from Terry:

I think the distance between Rebecca and me is 60 miles. We COULD meet in the middle except that if we met where one of us lives we couldn’t spend the entire time getting lost - you know what Rebecca’s like.

And me:

Terry and I are in the same bottom right-hand chunk of the country - probably around 60 miles apart, I reckon.

Terry again:

‘Bottom right-hand chunk of the country’?? You’ve never studied Geography have you, Rebecca? Do you have maps with legends like ‘Bottom bit’, ‘Right-hand chunk’, and so on?

To be fair, he has a point.

In unfamiliar surroundings2 I am one of those people who defaults to being guided by whomever might be accompanying me. Still, the member of my entourage responsible for navigation3 allowed me to participate in the task of finding the meeting point for our date with Terry and Elaine: the Kindertransport memorial outside Liverpool Street station.

‘It’s a three-minute walk, it says’, murmured Jim, nose-deep in Google Maps.

The moment I’d spotted the arrow on Jim’s phone screen I set off at speed in what I had thought to be the prescribed direction, glad to see that we only had a straight line to follow. Hurrying to keep up, Jim popped his phone back into his pocket.

Three-and-a-bit minutes later, he fished it out again.

We were dismayed by the display. Six minutes away. Reader, that initial arrow hadn’t known which way Jim and I had been facing, and we’d walked a route that was a full 180° out. That’s three minutes in the wrong direction.

😳

Eventually we found the memorial. My security detail4 paced nervously, comparing every person he saw with the large printouts of Terry and his bodyguard that he’d just unrolled from the long cardboard tube he’d been carrying.

‘I thought that was an umbrella!’ I was cross. What if it rained, and all we had for shelter were those two sheets of paper?

When Terry arrived to meet us it was abundantly clear that the mugshots were redundant. Instead of the bodyguard whose likeness he’d sent me, Terry had brought Elaine, the smiliest person I’d seen since the lady in the campervan next door as she triumphantly released her husband’s Italian leather brogue from the jaws of a thieving vixen. And Terry was smiling broadly too – a delightful expression to which his own mugshot had done no justice at all.

Talking nineteen to the dozen already we set off à quatre to find a cuppa. Elaine and I led the way with Terry and Jim already deep in conversation behind us, and soon we’d reached Paul’s, a café in the heart of London’s Square Mile.

Terry took charge. ‘Coffee?’

My jaw hit the floor. For all his talk of tea – proper tea, loose tea, how teabags are a crime against humanity – Terry drinks coffee in cafés!

😲

He came back with two Americanos, a latte and a flat white, each in a paper cup, along with a separate smaller cup of hot milk for the Americanos.

‘They’ve run out of proper cups!’ he told us. I was grateful that I hadn’t asked for tea. (Reader, I’m sure you’ll agree that a cuppa clad in cardboard is an abomination.)

And then… calamity.

One of us5 decided that the wobbliness of the table was an inconvenience too much to bear, and, armed with the discarded lid of one of the paper cups, dived underneath the table to wedge the lid under the appropriate corner of the pedestal.

Considerable coffee6 was spilt and an apology made. The table continued to wobble.

Later, one of us7 felt that the stack of finished-with cups would be much tidier with the adjacent smaller milk container placed on top, at which point in an unfortunate game of dairy Jenga the whole pile was upset, showering the person opposite8 with frothy milk.

A second apology was made. There was much dabbing of handkerchiefs.

brown ceramic mug on white ceramic saucer — Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash

After coffee and a disproportionate amount of clearing up, our first stop on the cultural itinerary was the ruin of a Roman amphitheatre in the dark basement of London’s Guildhall. Here we inadvertently disrupted a guided tour with our loud chat about the dangers of meeting strangers online in general and the risks of taking them somewhere so dimly lit in particular.

Next was the fine art exhibition, where we both discussed and admired contemporary urban art while complimenting each other’s own artistic efforts. A display of historical London maps in the adjoining gallery led us to discussions about some people’s gifts for getting lost. Because, Reader, it had not escaped my attention that it was Elaine who’d been leading the way so far [insert your own conclusions as to Terry’s sense of direction here].

This being the first time that we’d met, the attentions of the photographer9 in my entourage were required to record the event for posterity. Now, with almost every small child these days ready to give the answer ‘FAMOUS!!!!!!!!!!’ to the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ it came as no surprise that when Jim lifted his camera in the beautiful surroundings of the Guildhall a sudden swarm of celebrity-hungry groupies surrounded us.

‘Let me seeee!’
‘Out of the waaaaaay!’
‘IIIIIII was here first!’

And these were just some of the desperate shrieks delivered by the crowd. Autograph books, an assortment of pens and to my horror even a couple of square inches of bare flesh were thrust in our direction.

My eyes were wide as I looked across to Terry, the winsome poster boy for unruffled celebrity charm. He sighed.

‘You get used to it eventually.’

Terry and Rebecca at London’s Guildhall pictured by Jim Holden.

Terry’s obligations to the fame-hungry crowd fulfilled and the photoshoot demanded by his sponsors accomplished, it was at last time for lunch.

We headed for the nearest branch of Pret, and with hungry city workers having already plundered the shelves ahead of us we made our own selections from a smaller range of salads and sandwiches than would have been available had Terry’s adoring public not turned up in such hordes at the shoot.

Clearly aware of the danger posed by one of us when drinks were around, nobody ordered coffee.

👀

Daunt Books on Cheapside was a welcome spot for a post-prandial browse. Reader, I love an independent bookshop, and so, it seems, do Elaine and Terry.

We talked about the book I haven’t written and the ones that Terry has. ‘What do you most like to read?’ Terry asked me, adding, ‘I prefer non-fiction.’

I had my answer in an instant:

‘I like real people’s stories. Memoir, I mean. And that’s what I most like to write.’

I paused to reflect for a moment.

‘It’s chicken and egg. I don’t know if I enjoy writing what I write because that’s what I like to read, or whether I enjoy reading what I read because that’s what I like to write.’

Before long the four of us had each gravitated to a different corner of the bookshop, and reconvened a little while later at the till, where Terry was paying for a book which Elaine had chosen.

Time was getting on, and the plan all along had been to be back on the Tube long before the evening rush hour, but like a child on a trip out with friends in the summer holidays I didn’t want the day to end. I found a straw to clutch.

‘Shall we find a café?’ I gabbled. ‘After all, it’s my round!’ By now over five hours had passed since I’d last crawled on the floor, spilt anybody’s coffee or showered anyone in milk. Surely it was time for another go?

We found another branch of Pret, by then bursting with snappy city dressers picking up hot drinks for their commute home, and after long discussions with Terry and my entourage10 about the relative merits of caffe latte and its more chic chai equivalent, I ordered our drinks at the counter.

As I picked up the tray and turned towards the table where the others were already sitting, the customer who’d been waiting next to me for his drink to be made was being passed a cup. ‘Green tea?’ asked the busy barista. ‘Here you go!’

Oh no. A spark in my brain lit up. Green tea. I looked in dismay at one of the cups on my tray. ‘You’re a latte’, I told it, accusingly. ‘And that’s not what Elaine had asked me for.’

But that’s the thing about friends. They’re kind enough not to seem to mind when you spill their drink, cover them with frothy milk or bring them coffee rather than tea.

My entourage and I thoroughly enjoyed our first date with Terry and Elaine. Next time we meet we’ll be kicking off with a cup of tea – and let’s see whose gets spilt first! 😉

Love,

Rebecca

If you’ve enjoyed reading this letter to Terry, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you! My next ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ post will be published on Saturday.

Dear Reader, I'm lost

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