168. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-17
168. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-17
Travelling with(out) milk, making tea in a triangle and finding a fondness for the films of Hitchcock.
In which Rebecca feels the heat, recognises a familiar shape in the kitchen and shares a joint-venture crossword clue.
✒️
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 be published on Saturday.
Dear Terry,
Many thanks for your latest letter. You had described the difference between the very humid heat you’d experienced during your trip to Singapore in which you claim to have ‘lost half a stone just in the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel’, and the much drier heat of Phoenix, Arizona, which cleared your chest cold of two years’ standing in a mere fortnight. Impressive on both counts.
I’m not sure which flavour of heat I’d find more uncomfortable. Frankly, on most freezing, wet and/or blustery days of most months in Britain – and I’ll include August in this, because the weather has turned again – I’d settle for any hour-long stretch in which I don’t have to resort to donning a thermal vest and fluffy socks.
Still, at least we have weather. Whatever would we talk about otherwise? 😉
🥛 Milk
The milk you’d purchased in a US supermarket stocked with an entire aisleful of different options sounded extraordinary.
‘I assumed [it] would be OK, as it was fortified with vitamin D or something. When I… poured it into my tea, I’d used three quarters of the bottle before the colour of my tea turned from black to a very dark brown.’
When my brother was in the States he struggled with the fact that tea is habitually served without milk, and in cafés and diners and the like he found himself having to order a separate glass of milk in order to get the kind of cuppa he was used to at home. Knowing how very much he enjoys his tea – for I have never seen him accept a cuppa in anything smaller than a pint mug – I sought to procure him some travel-format milk in advance of his next trip. Eventually I found that boxes of UHT peel-top milk pots were available from hotel and catering suppliers, and sought to place an order.
I’m glad that my research before hitting the ‘Buy it now’ button showed me that travellers are not permitted to bring such things across the US border.
Why I’d felt the need to come up with such a ridiculous idea baffles me still: milk is very much available across the pond, after all, even if it doesn’t come in tea as standard.
🦇 Creature comforts
Like you, pre-campervan Rebecca wouldn’t touch with a bargepole the notion of camping.1 Creature comforts are important, after all.
However, there’s a slight difference between enjoying the creature comforts of a hotel room and sharing that hotel room with creatures. Years ago on a work trip to Bath Jim and I shared ours with a bat.
This is genuine footage.
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📰 Cruciverbalism
I’m glad you enjoyed solving my crossword clues. I liked your clue review, too. Here’s mine of a clue I liked in a recent edition of the Daily Telegraph.
I also worried about Charlie’s party (6)
What I found clever about this one is that it passed at first glance for an entire sentence in its own right, making it initially hard for me to identify what to look for.
It’s not a very comfortable sentence, though: the clumsy construction ‘I also’ sticks out like a sore thumb!
Looking more closely, of course, ‘worried’ is telling me to look for an anagram, and ‘I also’, then, provides letters for that. ‘Charlie’ distracted me for a nanosecond because I have friends with that name, but in this case it represents the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
The solution, then, is a six-letter word containing both the letter C and the letters of the clue’s first clumsy phrase:
I + ALSO + C = SOCIAL, meaning ‘party’. ✔️
Complicatedly simple, just the way I like it!
🫵 It’s your turn!
Jim and I have joined intellectual forces and come up with a clue of our own for you to solve:
The–alphabet (5)
Please don’t spoil our fun by finding it easy. 😉
🫖 The Tea-angle
I was interested to hear that you’re reading a book about the importance of triangles in everyday life. I’m not sure how aware I’ve ever been of such things, although Jim talks about triangles in the context of his photographic compositions, and, thinking about it, I am conscious of how well triangles seem to work in art.
The most important triangle in my own everyday life, however, is the one making up the trinity of kettle, mug and tea bag stash in my kitchen.
As far as my own reading goes, I’ve got one last chapter of ‘A Walk in the Woods’ by Bill Bryson left to read, and gosh, I shall miss it! The next volume on my list is a travel book which I’m looking forward to tackling as research for a future post.
I’ve been enjoying films as well as books recently. I noticed that the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Dial M for Murder was available for streaming on BBC iPlayer, and enjoyed it so much that I have since followed it up with Suspicion and Strangers on a Train. I’m not sure I’ll ever put Psycho on my list of Hitchcocks to watch, but golly, I’m enthralled enthrilled by what I’ve seen of his work so far. And of course it was great fun trying to spot the cameo appearance of the director in every film I’ve seen – what a smashing wheeze!
Given that Hitchcock directed over fifty movies I’m not going to be stuck for anything to watch for a while.
Terry, I can’t finish this letter without showing you this fabulous news article about the work of a chap keen to draw the local council’s attention to the state of its roads:
Ah yes, our beautiful roads. Of course, we’re used to driving on the left in the UK, but around here we seem to be driving on what’s left OF them… 🙄
😉
All the very best, as ever,
Rebecca
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Until we acquired our own house-on-wheels I had no idea what modern campervan camping was like, and Terry, nobody is more surprised than I am at how very much I enjoy it! Our van is comfortable, cosy, beautifully appointed and plenty big enough for two six-feet-plus-ers together to travel, cook, eat, sleep, work, read, chat, write, paint and simply enjoy being in each other’s company.
As someone who loves tea so much i needed a spreadsheet to keep track of my different flavors, and who is currently not allowed to have dairy, I feel this in my soul :D
I am a milk-in-tea drinker (green, not black, don't shun me), but I use heavy cream. Milk doesn't give me the satisfaction I crave. I liken this to my evolution with dark chocolate. There was a time I could be satisfied with 60% cacao, but that soon went to 70% and so on. I'm now settled in a 90% and could not be happier.
And bats -- much as I adore them -- in a hotel room is not a good advertisement from an establishment.