138. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-07
On reptiles vs butterflies, and 'just a bunch of people going to each other's houses'.
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,
Thank you for your most enjoyable letter, which I was happy to receive last week. Despite my fondness for paper post – accessorised so handsomely these days with the portrait of our new sovereign – in today’s hectic world I find myself nevertheless grateful for the efficiency of electronic delivery over the rather less reliable snail mail.
I had a cynical giggle last week at these words in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, which as you know I’m enjoying immensely.
“The post-office is a wonderful establishment!” said she. – “The regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”
“It is certainly very well regulated.”
“So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong – and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.”
On the subject of Austen, in your letter you had shared this fabulous quote from Jeremy Clarkson:
You give a kid a book with an actual plot and a lantern-jawed sergeant firing from the hip and you’ll show them that reading is the best hiding place in the world. You give them Emma and, after they’ve got to the first comma, they’ll want to put it down and take up glue-sniffing.
In a similar vein – albeit about a different Austen novel – I stumbled across this gem which
had shared on Substack Notes this week:
Although I’m not sure that as a child I ever read much about lantern-jawed sergeants firing from the hip, I thoroughly enjoyed a good story, and the work of Enid Blyton1 was my literary catnip. I loved her adventure stories, and graduated in short order from The Secret Seven to the more robust Famous Five, in due course joining the girls on the pages of Blyton’s Malory Towers canon in their adventures at boarding school. You – rightly, in my opinion – sing the praises of Classics Illustrated and the ability of their truncated, illustrated editions to get children interested in great literature, but I’d say that my own experience of reading began with straightforward words describing simple-but-exciting stories, and my taste for literature grew up with me.
I hope that you and Elaine spent an enjoyable Easter weekend. We had some absolutely beautiful weather, made the most of it by sitting outside in the sunshine both before and after a delicious Sunday lunch with family.
Terry, I even removed my gloves. 👀
You have claimed in your letter that you almost never get cold, and that ‘…when Elaine and I go out sometimes, people stare at us because it’s as though we are in two climate zones.’
On shoots when we’re working outside Jim has often said to any clients looking quizzically at my cold-proof clothing choices: ‘Do excuse Rebecca – she’s part reptile’. For a while now I’ve been encouraging him to use the rather prettier – yet in terms of cold-bloodedness, no less accurate – phrase ‘part butterfly’, but it hasn’t really stuck. 🦋
Does Elaine ever wear a bobble hat to keep warm? My hats are bobble-less, as I don’t want to add yet more height to my already ridiculous rangy 6ft-plus frame, but I’d like you to know that I am in no way responsible for what was my favourite story on BBC News last week:
My love for my beautiful Chiltern edition of ‘Emma’ has waned slightly since its satin ribbon bookmark became unstuck last week, but despite recognising the relative convenience of a paperback I am still relishing the heft of the book alongside its often equally-weighty text.
Here’s a fabulous example of the latter; a paragraph which I’ve read a number of times and which I love for its what I’m going to call ‘complex simplicity’:
Mrs Weston, who seemed to have walked there on purpose to be tired, and sit all the time with him, remained, when all the others were invited or persuaded out, his patient listener and sympathiser.
🙌
You’ve asked me what I’ll be reading after I’ve finished ‘Emma’, and I can tell you that I’m stepping temporarily sideways from my latest loves of both Austen and memoir in favour of some magical realism. My cousin Sheila had recommended Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library2 to me after she’d read what I’d written about invisible string, and when I saw this beautiful, thought-provoking post by
last week, well, that clinched it:
Jim and I had occasion to camp3 last Thursday, not wanting to brave a couple of hundred miles of pre-Easter weekend traffic to get home after a shoot. Here is a trio of six-second videos to show you what the weather threw at us and our van:
Around a minute after we’d decided we would be camping…
Halfway to our night stop…
Arrival at our nightstop…
We took refuge in the pub from the deafening noise of hailstones on the van’s roof, and I settled down next to the woodburning stove to dry out my soggy hat and read my book. The roaring fire, the glass of merlot and the words on the poster on the wall of the Ladies supplied exactly the kind of warmth I needed.
I’m already looking forward to your reply to this letter, but in the meantime please keep warm/cool/dry/hydrated, whichever is most appropriate for whatever British weather is thrown our way next!
All the very best, as always,
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.
You’ll find the rest of my letters in this series by clicking the ‘Letters to Terry’ tab on the top bar of my home page. Terry and I take it in turns to write to each other on alternate Wednesdays, and I really enjoy our light-hearted correspondence! You can access both Terry’s letters and mine using the index below:
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Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children’s writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have been translated into ninety languages. As of June 2019, Blyton held 4th place for the most translated author. She wrote on a wide range of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives. She is best remembered today for her Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers, and Malory Towers books, although she also wrote many others, including St Clare’s, The Naughtiest Girl and The Faraway Tree series.
Taken from Wikipedia.
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Whenever our work allows us to plan our camping in advance, we use commercial campsites with shower blocks, washing-up facilities, electric hook-up and water and sanitation points. As well as independent campsites we like to use sites belonging to the Camping and Caravanning Club and the Caravan and Motorhome Club, where we know we can expect excellent facilities.
However, we and our van are also members of Britstops, a superb set-up whereby businesses such as – but not limited to – pubs, garden centres, farm shops and vineyards allow those with campervans and motorhomes (ie vehicles with their own independent bathroom arrangements) to camp discreetly on their property overnight. It is expected that campers will buy goods or services from the business in exchange for camping for free.
With the nature of our work meaning that we often find ourselves needing to camp overnight at short notice, we have used Britstops locations numerous times. On this latest occasion we parked up in the tucked-away overflow car park of a fantastic pub which supplied us with delicious food and drink that evening, and we were on our way again before 7am next day.
So delighted to see a fellow Enid Blyton fan! I too liked The Secret Seven and The Famous Five, but my favorite Blyton series was The Five Findouters and Dog. Loved it!
Oh I’m so glad you included Note number 3! I was imagining you leaving the warmth and comfort of that pub to head out and drive on to pitch a tent somewhere in the dreadful hail!! But you were ‘there’ already and just able to sleep in your van I gather once you were warm and cosy (and in between snow showers!) So glad.