198. ✒️ A letter to Terry: #25-02

Better late than never… and more clichés than you can shake a stick at.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

In which Rebecca apologises for her lamentable grip on time, is grateful to be served a proper cup of tea and enjoys catching up with Terry after far too long.

✒️

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. We’re inviting you to read our letters over our shoulders!

Dear Terry,

Thanks for your latest letter!

Sorry, after all this time I doubt you even remember me. I’m Rebecca: the one who used to write you letters on a tight and predictable schedule of every other Wednesday but whose handle on timekeeping has loosened considerably since the start of the year.

Yup, late again. Sorry. Photo by Andy Beales on Unsplash

I’d like to throw in the phrase ‘better late than never’, but I wonder whether you might judge me for this obvious reliance on cliché to make a point. At the end of the day, when all’s said and done, it’s an uphill battle writing to a teacher. Still, in the weekly course you’re teaching on Zoom you’re bringing ideas to the table, encouraging me and my fellow students to think outside the box…. and bringing home the fact that I don’t need to rely on such low-hanging fruit as the overcooked literary stereotype.

😉

Remember this deliciously clichéd soup of a post you’d cooked up a couple of years ago for your ‘Experiments in style’ series? Happy days….!

Experiments in style: Cliché version

And I know you’ll enjoy reading between the lines of this article from the Saturday Evening Post, whose title, The 10 Silliest Clichés since Sliced Bread, absolutely takes the biscuit.

Photo by John Cardamone on Unsplash

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📋 On planning

I’ve always had a soft spot for Spike Milligan, doyen of dry wit whose self-penned epitaph on his Sussex gravestone – ‘I told you I was ill’ sums up his humour in just six words. His attitude to planning, which you’d shared with me in reference to your own feelings about making new year’s resolutions – ‘if you don’t make a plan, the plan can’t go wrong’ – is actually pretty sensible when it comes to the bigger stuff.

I get very lost if I don’t plan my must-do minutiae, in that every tiny job needs to be listed in my notebook in order that I won’t forget to do it, or that I can at least postpone it with intention using The Bullet Journal Method’s ‘task migration’ practice. It’s the bigger picture which I find so daunting to plan.

I can’t stand the headache of a large project, and I’ve always viewed new year’s resolutions as threats. Failure is pretty easy, even likely, so why should I spell out in advance to myself precisely what I’m going to fail at? Never mind ‘fail to plan: plan to fail’ – heck, I’ll head straight for ‘I’d rather not even try than risk failing, thanks’.

Oh blimey, Terry – at this rate that might become my epitaph. 🙄

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🍳 Breakfast

I was wondering this morning what breakfast looks like in other people’s houses. No, not the menu, or the presentation, but how their morning routine might compare with my own. In our house, cups of tea need to be made and delivered to the bedroom first thing (preferably not by me), but perhaps other people go straight downstairs, fresh as those clichéd daisies, to brew coffee? And are there pets clamouring to be fed? Are they the wake-up call, rendering alarm clocks redundant? With no cats to paw me back to consciousness I rely on technology, but not having the follow-through of a hungry pet demanding the attention of a human with a tin-opener I’m afraid I’m rather too friendly with the ‘snooze’ button.

When I finally make it downstairs – after my cuppa, the NYT Mini Crossword, Wordle and Connections – it’s usually still dark, and I can get on with my kitchen chores in peace.

Yet on Sunday morning I arrived in the kitchen way later than usual, and it was already what passes for daylight for this time of year.

FEED ME!

There was a one-bird queue at the back door; no, up against the back door. ‘Our’ blackbird lives the life of Riley down here – water bath cleaned and topped up on a daily basis, food delivered whenever we see he’s around – but Terry, he’s getting too big for his boots beak with his unreasonable demands.

Having not been fed at his usual time of early o’clock, thanks to my weekend lie-in, he was kicking up no end of a fuss. I watched him devour in moments the handful of dried mealworms I put out for him, and knowing that he’d only invite his annoying friends the starlings and jackdaws to join him if I put down any more I ignored him while I got on with making eggs and porridge.

He stuck around, squeaking his complaints at high Hertz. Have you ever heard a blackbird needing oiling, right up close? It’s not the world’s prettiest sound. I asked him sarcastically if he wanted to join me in a boiled egg (cannibalism? Infanticide?) or share Jim’s porridge (my preferred option), and I swear that he replied ‘No thanks: I’d like coffee, half a grapefruit with brown sugar and a warm croissant. Oh, and the Sunday Times to read. Would you iron it first, please?’

Thank the Lord I have neither children nor pets. The bird had to lump it in the end with a second handful of mealworms.

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☕️ A cup of tea that was just my cup of tea

Jim and I broke the habit of a lifetime (how many clichés is that now?) by pausing at a diner on the bypass on our way home from a hospital appointment recently. It was American-themed, with its menu offerings of hamburgers, slaw, fries and milkshakes complemented very Britishly with the inclusion of this tempting phrase:

‘Builders’ tea’

Ah, Terry. Music to my ears, fuel to my flame, and exactly what the doctor ordered.

BIG mug, PROPER teabag, tools for DIY mashing, a tiny splash of milk…….

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🧠 Clever clogs

You’ve earned zero points for your answer of ‘who knows?’ to the puzzle from BBC TV quiz Only Connect I’d shared in my last letter, but Sharron Bassano has earned this gold star ⭐️ for solving it absolutely perfectly.

Here’s another look:

What’s the connection between these four words?

Toyota
Sensuousness
Booby
Ananas

The answer – thanks, Sharron! – is that when the last letter of each word is moved to the front and the results are read backwards, the words are the same as the ones you’d started with.

Toyota ➡️ Atoyot ⬅️ Toyota
Sensuousness ➡️ Ssensuousnes ⬅️ Sensuousness
Booby ➡️ Yboob ⬅️ Booby
Ananas ➡️ Sanana ⬅️ Ananas

😁

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🏎️ From A to B in the blink of an eye

Your video taken from the passenger seat when Elaine was driving was the most exciting car chase I’ve seen since The Italian Job! Wow, stick that on a big screen and audience adrenaline would hit the roof. I wonder if it would be even more impressive if you sped the footage up at all?

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✏️ I’ll keep this brief

The latest class in the writing course I’m taking¹ covered flash fiction, and in order to score extra points with my teacher I intend to cover everything I have to say in my next letter in just a hundred words.

This is likely to be a relief to many.

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↻ Circling back to the start

Terry, it’s your turn to write next time: the ball’s back in your court. Oh, and here’s a writing tip for you: avoid clichés like the plague.

See you on the flip side! No, okay, enough already.

All the very best, as ever,

Rebecca

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1. CityLit’s The 60-minute writer is a weekly hour-long course which is offered multiple times a year either on Zoom or in-person, with each eleven-session block being taught by a different tutor. I’m enjoying every moment of the current iteration, which is taught over Zoom by…. Terry Freedman!