147. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-10

The scourge of the Ter-postrophe, potholes on the moon, and is Austen a load of noodles?

May 15, 2024

black round frame on white surface — Photo by Timo Müller on Unsplash

In which Rebecca addresses the virulence of the Ter-postrophe, reports on a bruising encounter between interviewer and interviewee and considers the relationship between instant noodles and the Jane Austen canon of work.

✒️

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 latest contribution to our continuing catalogue of correspondence. The letter served to educate, inform and – no, I have to say it – horrify me in equal measure.

You feel aggrieved about the use of the ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’? Terry, I am a reader with a grievance against the Ter-postrophe: a virulent form of the virgule1 which if not treated might go on to infect not only Substack but also the English language as a whole. Let me remind you of the paragraph below, in which you had described your intention to create an activist section of the Apostrophe Protection Society. You will see that I have enclosed your dangerous text within a box in order to protect the innocent:

Don’t get me started as to why my blue-underlining word-processing program has not picked up on the fact that ‘apostrophe’s’ is a crime against punctuation. 🙄

🤬

I enjoyed looking up my Austen name from the link you’d supplied. I’m more than a little disgruntled to have discovered that my birth date credentials have not elevated my title of address any higher than ‘Miss’, but I am nevertheless fond of my new moniker. This new Rebecca – sorry, Miss Caroline Bennet of Donwell Abbey – has connections to Pride & Prejudice through both Caroline Bingley and the Bennet family, and to Emma, in which Donwell Abbey is the name of the Knightley family seat.

The scathing book review to which you referred has absolutely horrified me. How would the review writer have felt if someone had written this about their work and published the result?

This is the most unreadable book I have ever read. Not only is it poorly written on a sentence-by-sentence level, but it is also intellectually incoherent and, at times, of questionable veracity.

Wow, Terry. That’s mean. 😕

Mind you, in the Review section of the edition of the Daily Telegraph published on Saturday May 4, 2024 I came across the text of an absolute gem of a letter written by Lucian Freud to journalist Lynn Barber, which Barber had included in her article recalling ‘her most brilliant – and bruising – encounters with artists’. The piece is titled ‘Of all the horrible things to say…’

Here’s what she has written about her encounter with Freud:

“I spent years trying to get an interview with Lucian Freud – he was always top of my wish list, and I practically stalked him. I wrote to him about once a fortnight and never got a reply. Until one day, I did. I’d said in my letter that I knew he worked almost non-stop but that he must sometimes have to go to the dentist or out for a meal or something and I’d come along as a fly on the wall. This was his reply:
Dear Mrs Barber,
Your letter to me is based on the assumption that there is/exists some reason or need for you to interview me or write about me. I do, as you rightly suppose, occasionally eat something and (as a result) go to the dentist but that is some way from agreeing to be s--- on by a stranger.
Sincerely Lucian Freud.
I still have the letter, framed, in the downstairs loo.”
Taken from The Daily Telegraph, Saturday May 4, 2024.

Terry, had you heard that the pothole population of UK roads is greater than the number of craters on the moon?

A political party has claimed that Britain’s roads could have more than 100 times more potholes than craters on the Moon. The UK’s roads had more than a million potholes last year, the party said, comparing this with astronomers’ estimates that there are more than 9,000 craters on the Moon’s surface.

I’m not entirely sure of the political point being made here. 🤔 British roads encounter issues caused by vehicles, weather and lack of maintenance, and countless meteorites have been striking the surface of the moon and making craters since time immemorial. I can’t compare with any confidence the two scenarios described by the party, can you?

Never mind the moon, though – what about heading for the other direction? This hole in the lane on the way to the asparagus farm is so deep that the bottom isn’t even visible. The traffic cone is clearly out of its depth; I suspect it’s clinging to a hidden ledge in order to avoid falling not only to the centre of the earth but probably beyond it and out the other side.

I love the regional variations in language which I’ve encountered on our recent road trips. At a campsite in Derbyshire I came across this excellent sign which reminded me of a lecture in which my university dialectology professor focused on ‘while’.

Smith’s chip van is due to visit the campsite every Wednesday from 5pm *until* 7.30pm.

In his lecture, the professor told a brilliant story about a new level crossing in South Yorkshire where a road which crossed the railway line had recently been built. The sign read as follows:

WHILE RED LIGHTS SHOW, WAIT HERE

I gather that there had been some headscratching at the head office of Network Rail when reports came in of stationary cars at the crossing, their drivers waiting UNTIL the red lights were flashing. Once the sign was changed to ‘when’ instead of ‘while’, the potential for misunderstandings disappeared.

Urban myth? Probably. Good story though!

I’ve nearly finished reading ‘All Roads Lead to Austen’ by Amy Elizabeth Smith, and last week I came across a passage which describes perfectly the whole Austen canon. Smith recounted a discussion between her students about whether all of Austen’s books were the same, which had prompted one member of the class to compare Austen’s work with – believe it or not – instant noodles.

Here’s how the discussion went:

‘Are, like, all of Jane Austen’s novels totally the same, or what?’ Arguments raged back and forth… until Rickie… silenced the room with the cry ‘TOP RAMEN!’
Dumbstruck, we all waited for him to work through the thought.
‘There’s chicken, and there’s shrimp,’ Rickie said, scanning our faces urgently, leaning forward and clutching his desk. ‘There’s vegetarian. And there’s beef. But they’re all Top Ramen! Chicken and shrimp and beef aren’t the same, but they’re all Top Ramen!’

Author Smith concludes Rickie’s point as follows:

Indeed. A nice analogy for how Austen’s works fit within a genre – they’re all comic romances – yet each remains distinctive. People who assume ‘read one, you’ve read them all’ are missing out on the wonderful differences between chicken and shrimp and beef.

I’m happy to have dragged up the subject of potholes again for this letter, Terry, but it would be remiss of me not to balance the scales by including my other specialism: tea. On that steaming subject I’ll leave you with this crossword clue for your cogitative pleasure, taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Serious tea-user reformed (7)

Let me know what you come up with!

All the very best, as ever,

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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