180. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-21
On blue soup, more zoological grocery ingredients, and being a poor loser.
In which Rebecca tries – and fails – to remember what it was like turning 21, recalls a film scene containing some alarming-looking food and admits to being extremely competitive.
✒️
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,
Thank you for your most recent missive, in which you showed me – and all of those reading our correspondence over our shoulders – quite what the party animal you are! Happy jolly ‘birthday’ to us both on the publication of my 21st letter to you this year!
🙄 Twenty-one again? I wish…
Sigh. My fiftieth birthday looms large on the horizon, and despite my dodgy mathematical ability I have nevertheless been able to calculate that my own twenty-first happened well over twenty-one years ago. I hope you’re impressed.
There will now be a short break to this letter while I have a snooze.
(Y’know, because age.)
🏆 Winning is not the name of the game
I sympathise with you for your family’s decision to bar you from the position of banker whenever you played Monopoly. Although I’m considered extremely competitive where it comes to board games, I maintain that I am misunderstood. You see, I’m not ever trying to beat anybody, but am simply desperate not to fail. I don’t think my past opponents have ever appreciated the difference!
✒️ Six-word reviews
In an e-mail to you I’d expressed my frustration at being unable to identify the title of the book which you’ve reviewed in these six words:
They dictate, but they can’t write!
Terry, I had no idea. Here’s what I told you:
I have NO clue what you’ve reviewed - I’m wondering if it’s perhaps a book about more than one illiterate autocrat? 🤔 Unlikely. I’ll keep trying!
Under the pretext of being helpful – an impression you spoiled by adding the word ‘Snigger’ to the end of your e-mail – you sent me a picture of a bookcase bursting at the seams. In fact, it was your own bookcase.
‘You may find the answer to my 6-word review here’, you assured me.
After scanning a diverse range of titles on shelves which were packed impressively two-deep my eyes landed on Dictator Literature by Daniel Kalder. I wondered if that could be it? I hit Google to find out more about the book, and realised the significance of the latter half of your six-word review: ‘…they can’t write’.
Here’s what Amazon had to say:
What do [books by dictators] reveal about their authors, the worst people imaginable? And how did they shape twentieth-century history? To find out, Daniel Kalder read them all – the badly written and the astonishingly badly written – so that you don’t have to. This is the untold history of books so terrible they should have been crimes.
Terry, I rest my case. Thank you for the challenge – and of course for the picture clue!
🍔 + 🔵 = 🤯 SHOULD food be blue?
You recounted in your letter the alarming story of a friend of yours at university with a penchant for dyeing blue everything which he cooked. In answer to your question, no, I’ve come across neither blue tomato soup nor blue mashed potatoes in my own gastronomic experience, but you’ve reminded me of a terrific scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary. The film’s heroine is holding a dinner party for her friends, and in her vain search for string to bind celery and leeks together for the soup she finds only….. well, you can see the results for yourself in the two clips below. The first is 13 seconds long, the second is 16.
Yum. 🫣
📰 Read all about it!
I both groaned and giggled at the punny funny newspaper headlines you shared, particularly Orange growers squeezed by rising costs. I came across a Daily Telegraph headline earlier this month along similar lines:
Drizzle of hope for shoppers as end of drought cuts olive oil price
Genius sub-editing!
I enjoyed the examples of ‘tabloidese’ which you’d extracted from Keith Waterhouse’s book On Newspaper Style.
Annoyance becomes outrage
Bad luck becomes jinx
Criticise becomes slam
Disagreement becomes clash
I wonder if you might one day use tabloidese as the modifier in one of your Oulipian ‘Experiments in Style’ posts? I’ve just pinched a line from your last letter and given it the relevant treatment. What do you think?
Original:
I made the mistake once of accepting my friend’s offer of a cup of tea.
My attempt at tabloidese:
I blundered once by giving my thumbs-up to a crony foisting a cup of tea on me.
🧑🍳 Cooking and shopping for groceries
Speaking of things to consume, are you ever tempted to follow any recipes you see online? One I saw recently for a microwaved chocolate mug cake was illustrated by a downright dangerous-looking photograph.
That mug looks to me like enamelled metal, risking both fire and the need to replace the microwave! Bon 🔥 appetit. 👀
🦄 Fantasy food and zoological ingredients 🐅
I am thrilled that your associate Lord Dunabunk saw fit to write to the powers-that-be about the dubious decision to market those unicorn slices I’d showed you. I wonder if Lord D might feel rather better about another product I spotted recently on my online grocery provider’s website? I’m glad that unlike those poor sliced unicorns at least the tigers are safe.
🌧️ British weather
What’s the London weather like at the moment? Last week saw us put the central heating on for the first time since spring, and oh boy, now that it’s warmed up a bit here comes the October rain. Jim was away on a shoot last week, and both he and the van got soggy feet. Here’s what he sent me:
Keep warm! And dry! And writing!
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.
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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"There will now be a short break to this letter while I have a snooze.
(Y’know, because age.)". I am with you, kid. Move over. I'll get the afghan...
Great letter! I love this series.
I love it any time a photo by Jim is featured. He's such an amazing artist!