120. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-01

A shiny new number, snow and (not) rubbing shoulders with royalty.

Jan 10, 2024

white and red arrow sign — Photo by Marcel Eberle on Unsplash

This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit

, in which we take turns every other Wednesday to delve into the things that British people talk about the most. So that you can explore these unashamed clichés for yourself we’re inviting you to read our letters over our shoulders.

My next ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ post will of course be published on Saturday.

Dear Terry,

Happy new year, and many thanks for your first missive of 2024. I must apologise for again, as you put it, ‘going off-piste and messing up the numbering system’. I note your ingenuity in numbering your letter 2024-01, and have followed your lead accordingly.

I’m writing this on Monday, the first day of the week-long cold snap predicted by the Met Office. Although it felt chilly outside this morning I have to admit that I hadn’t taken the yellow weather warning seriously. Then the sleet began in my coffee break, and by lunchtime the falling icy slush had become flakes of the actual white stuff.

Here’s a clip. You’ll see I’ve switched the station lamp on, which I feel gives the video a bit of a ‘Narnia’ vibe – what do you think?

We’re just back from a short break in Norfolk in the van: on the royal estate of Sandringham House, no less! The King and Queen were in residence – at their winter home, that is, not in our van – until yesterday morning, but despite our spending two nights within a stone’s throw of the sovereign on a campsite within his grounds we didn’t catch a glimpse of any royalty.

Terry, their Majesties didn’t even apply for an audience with the Holdens, and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a shame they missed out on their opportunity to meet us.

I’d been hoping to make a start on this reply to your letter while I was away, but in fact we spent most of our time out and about. We made a beeline for the Cley Smokehouse to buy kippers1 (a whole one for me, fillets for Jim – because bones 🙄), and enjoyed a bracing walk along the beach. With beaches closer to home facing due south, the shingle banks at Cley felt rather different: being halfway along the north Norfolk coastline Cley is no stranger to the ravages of the North Sea. Put it this way: I was glad to be wearing my thermals. 🥶

Important note: Out of concern for the future resale value of our van we did not grill the kippers on board.

In my hurry to replace the depleted ink cartridge in my fountain pen last week I had inadvertently reached for one in the wrong colour. This was an inkcident2 waiting to happen: I’m a creature of habit, Terry, and I write my draft posts in blue ink and my bullet journal entries in black. My journal pages for December 31st and January 1st both look ridiculous; the former begins with jet-black writing and thanks to the mistaken inkcursion3 ends in a dirty blue, while the latter starts inksipidly4 dilute but with stronger black notes to finish.5

I was glad to learn that you’re still enjoying Northanger Abbey. I was given this beautiful edition of Emma for Christmas, and I’m itching to make a start on it once I’ve finished my current read.

While I was away I was thrilled to find the book I’ve pictured below in a second-hand shop. As a fellow Austenthusiast have you ever come across it?

Here’s an extract from the blurb on the back cover:

With a suitcase full of Jane Austen novels en español, Amy Elizabeth Smith set off on a yearlong Latin American adventure: a traveling book club with Jane. In six unique, unforgettable countries, she gathered book-loving new friends – taxi drivers and teachers, poets and policitians – to read Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.
…Amy came to learn what Austen knew all along: that we’re not always speaking the same language – even when we’re speaking the same language.
All Roads Lead to Austen celebrates the best of what we love about books and revels in the pleasure of sharing a good book – with good friends.
Taken from All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith, published 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc

As for what I’m reading at the moment, Jim and I had thoroughly enjoyed the Netflix film True Spirit, the dramatisation of Australian teenager Jessica Watson’s book about her solo circumnavigation of the globe, and I had found myself wanting to experience Jessica’s story as she had written it. Terry, her book is an edge-of-the-seat read.

True Spirit: The Aussie Girl Who Took On The World was published in 2010, and Jessica starts her introduction to the 2022 edition with these words:

For me, picking up this book twelve years after it was first published means jumping back into an optimistic, elated moment in time. To read back over the words of my 16- and 17-year-old self is to cringe occasionally – did I really say that? Did I need to use so many exclamation marks?
Taken from True Spirit: The Aussie Girl Who Took On The World, published 2010 by Hachette Australia

I enjoy a wide range of books but don’t often read any written by teenagers. The language throughout this one – like Jessica herself, in fact – is energetic, fearless and vibrant, and the teenage girl that I once was absolutely recognises Jessica’s enthusiasm for exclamation marks. True Spirit is an accomplished work, a terrific read and a breath of fresh air.

I am grateful for your new-year update on Puddlegate, in which you had claimed ‘the whole of our area is now one monstrous puddle’. I am sorry to say that we’re in similar straits with our potholes, which are joining up to form craters several miles across. Average depth is yet to be determined, but eyewitness reports of molten lava bubbling in their depths are not to be underestimated.6

I was at the same time both tickled and horrified to see my nearest town featured in the Telegraph Magazine’s 2023: We Made It edition. It appears that the graffiti artists of Uckfield had provided a pressing reason for the council to send their tarmac team to fill them in.

Please look away now if you are of a sensitive disposition.

Terry, after all that filth I feel I need to end on a festive flourish. Here’s a headline from Tasting Table which I’d spotted on Apple News on Christmas Eve:

Never mind that it’s not a good idea to store it; what the Dickens is ‘leftover champagne’? Leftover turkey, well, there’s plenty in the freezer – but any bottles of bubbly around here certainly didn’t keep hold of their contents for long enough to earn the ‘leftover’ label… 🤔

Cheers to that! 🥂

Happy new year, and all the very best,

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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