191. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-24
Left-handed learning, and what would you call a group of Father Christmases?
In which Rebecca notices something in the water, goes back to school and finishes one of her favourite reads of the year.
✒️
This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit Terry Freedman, in which we take it in turns 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.
Dear Terry,
Many thanks for your latest letter, which as always I enjoyed immensely. It was a feast for all the senses, containing as it did not only the kind of erudite words to which I have become accustomed from your side of our enduring correspondence but art and music in spades!
Please congratulate Elaine on her terrific performance of Mendelssohn’s Scherzo number 60, opus 2 – not only is she an extremely accomplished musician but she has such confidence and presence at the piano. Bravo!
I was horrified to read your tale of woe about your former colleague’s five-hour journey on foot to work in severe weather only to be sent home again shortly after his arrival! There’s no sign of that kind of weather here right now, I’m glad to say, although one deceptively sunny day a couple of weeks ago was chilly enough to warrant donning gloves for my trip into the back garden to top up the bird baths.
As you can see it didn’t go to plan…
🦈 There’s something else in the water…
As you may already know I have a penchant for scary fish movies, and to my delight a couple of weekends ago I found a brand-new specimen of the genre – Something in the Water – on Netflix.
Terry, the dialogue was hilarious. Here’s my favourite exchange between two panic-stricken characters:
‘What kind of shark is that? A bitey one?’
‘I don’t know, I’m not the shark whisperer!’
👍 Left-handed learning
I love to learn new things, and I recently booked myself onto an hour-long Zoom class in brush lettering for left-handers. Handedness is something I’ve found that not every course provider will take into account, and when I was learning how to crochet a few years ago I had been thrilled to find an instructor on YouTube with an entire playlist of classes in which she was demonstrating the craft left-handed.
My experience with the left-handed lettering course was made immediately fabulous by the delivery of materials beforehand. I’m not sure that many right-handers even spot things like this, but have you ever noticed that pens and pencils are printed to display their branding the right way for right-handed users – which by default is upside-down for anyone left-handed trying to use it?
My friend and fellow leftie Mary B highlights this quirk by drawing pens this way round! Have a look at this post of hers to see what I mean!
Back on Zoom, the other course participants and I all opened our packets of materials on screen. I spotted the unexpected quirk in branding orientation straight away, and piped up ‘wow, you’ve even given us left-handed pens!’ to the tutor.
‘No, they’re the same pens we use for the right-handed brush lettering course!’ she told me.
‘But LOOK!’ I held the pen up to the screen.
I brush-lettered for the remaining 58 minutes of the class with a huge I-feel-so-loved smile on my face, and didn’t care how barmy I looked on screen. As for the pens themselves – well, they write quite nicely, don’t they?
I wonder whether participants on the right-handed brush lettering course have noticed that the branding on their pens is upside down? 🙃
*gloats*
📝 Planning
I enjoyed reading your paragraphs on planning, and might even use some of your methods myself! Thank you for the tips. 👍
I like to have a stash of ideas, stories and snippets to harvest, and jot down a note whenever I think of something I’d like to tell you about in a letter. When you publish a letter to me I pick a few topics of yours which I’d like to follow up on in my reply, and then, like you, I add things of my own.
You asked me this:
‘Do you spend ages mulling over every word in your letters to me, or do you bash the letter out and say “That’ll do”?’
Terry, don’t take offence but I’m noticing that I spend less time on writing these letters than I used to. 😉 However, this is not because I’m putting in any less effort, but because my writing confidence has grown over the time we have been corresponding, for which you deserve a great deal of the credit! Aside from that, as I’ve explained above, I have a plan for how to tackle each letter. 😇
📚 Reading
I’ve never read any Philip Roth but was interested in what you had to say about his use of free indirect speech in The Human Stain, the first book on the reading list for the course you’re enrolled on.
I’ve just finished reading an absolutely beautiful travel memoir, Boogie up the River, by Mark Wallington, a writer I had first come across thanks to Raynor Winn’s multiple references to its prequel, Five Hundred Mile Walkies, in her own fabulous read The Salt Path. Boogie isn’t a book I’d sought out, but when I was looking for a copy of Five Hundred Mile Walkies, which is out of print, I could only find a secondhand volume containing both. The unexpected bonus of Boogie up the River is a tale of a man and ‘his’ dog making their way to the source of the Thames in a Victorian skiff, and Terry, it’s an utter delight.
I enjoyed it because:
a) it’s very, very funny, ⬇️
Boogie isn’t my dog. Boogie isn’t anyone’s dog. Boogie is a freelance.
He was found abandoned as a puppy, and taken home to a darkened room in south London and fed crisps. There he grew up the hard way, a London mongrel, devious and streetwise with a strong sense of survival and little in common with other dogs. He would never fetch sticks, only hubcaps.
He came to stay with me in north London a while ago for a weekend and never left. I still don’t know how long he’s here for. We live our own lives, Boogie and me.
and b) the writing is terrific. ⬇️
The river felt thicker after the rain, and the sensation of being in the control of something powerful and inevitably grew stronger with each mile. The elixir-like flow drew all life to its banks. And not just wildlife – churches loved to hide in its recesses; the fine country houses that I passed were all possessive of their river views; the land and the farm stock all lurched towards the water for sustenance.
🎅🏼 Happy holidays!
Terry, I love a bit of festive music in the run-up to Christmas, and have been listening to Classic FM whenever I’m busy in the kitchen. I’ve always enjoyed singing carols – although enjoyment varies from limited to absent for anyone within earshot of my tuneless bellowing – and this across-the-decades duet of ‘O Holy Night’ sung by Aled Jones (treble) and Aled Jones (baritone) still always moves me to tears.
The radio presenter on one recent morning’s broadcast had been asking listeners for their suggestions for a collective noun for a group of Father Christmases.
Jim and I came up with these alliterative ideas:
A stocking of Santas
A sack of Santas
A sleigh of Santas
Other listeners were far more clever:
A ho, ho, host of Father Christmases
A presence (presents!!!) of Father Christmases
A contract of Santas – because of all the Clauses!
Speaking of festive excesses, of which a large group of Father Christmases is clearly an example, I discovered for the first time while doing the Saturday Telegraph’s quick crossword this week that ‘be on a diet’ is an anagram for ‘obedient’.
Well, Terry, I’ve never been great at doing what I’m told, and heck, it’s Christmas! Mince pie, anyone?
🎄
I wish you, Elaine, Willow, Minty and Mocha all the very best for the festive season, and I’m already looking forward to taking up the cudgels of correspondence with you anew in 2025!
All the very best, as ever,
Rebecca
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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, 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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Happy sigh. Merry Christmas dear Rebecca. And thank you so much for that gift of Aled singing with himself! What a voice.
" my writing confidence has grown" - Rebecca! You are one of the most confident writers in my book and a maestro of language and write with such flow that sometimes I feel like I'm on that river in the Boogie book. Your confidence comes across "loud and clear" (could that be a clue in a crossword puzzle?) and as it matures, it mellows. Thanks for the mention in the left-handed section 😁, btw. Part of drawing my pens the upside down left handed proper way, is due to a drawing instructor's advice to "just draw what's in front of you". My pens are always in their left-handed-at-the-ready, so upside down is upside right for me. 😄 Merry Christmas, too.