132. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-05
Crazy golf and the importance of/for/against using the correct preposition.
This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit Terry Freedman, 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,
Many thanks for your letter, which brightened my Wednesday – a day of unremitting rain – considerably.
I’m writing my reply on what is, I gather, the first day of meteorological spring, March 1, although of course the vernal equinox of March 20 is still several weeks away. I love Mother Nature’s sense of irony to have granted me this view from my bedroom window when I opened the curtains this morning:
Terry, I was so disgusted that I nearly closed them again.
Your childhood memory about pillarboxes reminded me too of something which had puzzled me as a child.
This is what you’d written:
‘When I was very young… I used to wonder how the post ended up at its destination when you popped a letter through one of these:
I imagined a subterranean system of pipes that automatically ‘knew’ where each letter had to go.’
I remember once asking my dad ‘Where do the letters go?’ as I heard the envelopes containing my birthday thank-you letters drop down from the slot at the top of the pillarbox.
‘They go down to the sorting office, for the people to sort!’ he told me.
Always a very literal interpreter of any explanation I was given I connected the word ‘down’ to the sound of my letters landing, and assumed they’d arrived in a heap on the floor of an underground cavern populated by those whose job it was to sort them.
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.
Speaking of science fiction, well I have to say that I required a sizeable pinch of salt to aid my cranial digestion of your talk of ‘quirks of space-time’, ‘infinite numbers of alternative universes’ and ‘parallel dimensions’ in your cynical questioning of my photographic evidence of our meeting. Terry, the camera never lies….
⬇⬇⬇
In other news, I am intending to offer my services to the Highways Agency as a pothole detector. It’s a job-share position, actually, requiring a driver (me) and a passenger in the early stages of recovery from abdominal surgery (Jim a few weeks ago). On our way home from the hospital at a speed in single figures after his operation we discovered that even slight scarring of the road surface was detectable by the patient, who, by the way, complained at least as much about my swerving to avoid potholes as he did about any inadvertent encounters with the bally things themselves.
🙄
As you know, I’ve heard of various methods for communities to draw local authorities’ attention to their pothole predicament – the story about one such undertaking in our nearest town, in fact, making the national news; something on which I’d reported in this post – but this was a new one on me:
‘A teenager has launched a cheeky protest over the state of his town’s roads – by fishing in the huge potholes. Ben Thornbury got the idea after seeing a fishing meme on social media. He said: ‘I thought I’d do it in real life. Straight away I ordered a fishing rod.’
It is not the first time Ben has resorted to such unconventional protesting methods. Last year he created a crazy golf course out of the town’s potholes – with more than 20 residents turning up to have a go.’
Taken from Manchester Evening News
Terry, do you remember the recent bunkum recommendation for adding salt to one’s tea? Here’s a terrific post by Mark R DeLong about the scandal, in case you need a reminder:
Well, I was horrified – no, more than that: offended – to receive an e-mail last week with the subject line ‘Add 1oz baking soda to your tea’.
Baking soda, Terry. 🤯
This is a screenshot of the content of the message:
Terry, I am not going to be adding an entire ounce of bicarb to anything I am intending to consume, and WebMD’s entry (excerpt below) is not enough to convince me to use the stuff in a context of anything other than baking or domestic cleaning.
‘People commonly use sodium bicarbonate for indigestion. It is also used for stomach ulcers, athletic performance, kidney damage, dental plaque, tooth discoloration, and many other conditions, but there is no good scientific evidence to support many of these uses.’
No, I’ll bet there isn’t. 🙄
‘For’ stomach ulcers – now, that reminds me of my enduring struggle to find the correct preposition to use when I was learning German. Do we really want something ‘for’ stomach ulcers? 🧐
A pharmacist whose advice I’d sought when on a trip to Germany I’d felt I was going down with a cold looked at me in bafflement when I asked him for his recommendation ‘for a sore throat’.
‘Pardon?’ he replied. ‘Do you mean that you’re seeking to get a sore throat?’
‘I have a sore throat’, I clarified.
‘Well then!’ he retorted. (I swear he rolled his eyes at me.) ‘Let me give you something against a sore throat!’
Terry, it turns out that I’m not the only literal interpreter of information around here.
Don’t ever ask me about my search for dandruff shampoo which a member of my au-pair household in Germany had asked me to procure. I was never brave enough to go back to that drugstore… 😳
Well, it’s about time to put the kettle on for a cup of coffee. Yup, coffee. It’s actually happened: Holden Heights has finally run out of teabags – and so, it seems, has my grocery delivery service:
Terry, it’s going to be a long week….
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.
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OUT OF TEA!? OH NO! That’d be like me running out of Lindt chocolate—the kind with chili in it.
I’m going shopping today and can look around in our store here in Maine USA to see if they have your Tetley tea in stock and send you some. ❤️
I liked the golfing in the potholes meme. Too funny.
No Tea?!!!!! Oh NO!!!!!