219. ✒️ A letter to Terry: #25-09

Dodgy internet searches, too many books and going for a dip.

Jul 02, 2025

closeup photography of gold number 9 — Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash

In which Rebecca deletes her internet history, admits to having creaking bookshelves and reports on her first swim for years.

✒️

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,

Many thanks for your latest letter, which as usual was a highly enjoyable read. It began impressively with your solution to the spooneristic crossword clue I’d sent you to tackle.

This was it:

Spooner’s settlement ten cents for break from work (8)

And here’s how you solved it:

I worked out half of the clue: ten cents = dime. However, I’m afraid I cheated and looked up the answer, which is downtime. The reason is as follows:
Settlement = town
Ten cents = dime
As those two answers are supposed to form one 8 letter word, we get Towndime. However, this is Spooner we’re talking about, so we switch the first letters of those two words. Thus:
Town = down
Dime - time
= downtime

Bravo, Terry!

🎬 Movie magic, movie mayhem

Part 1: 👍

Swerving away from crossword challenges – a great disappointment to me, given that I have just last weekend subscribed to NYT Games in order to hone my craft – you had instead set me two film-related questions.

Which film ends with the words “Nobody’s perfect”, and what was the context?

Although I’ve never watched the film, I was happy to recognise this as the final line from cross-dressing crime caper Some Like It Hot – a snippet of general knowledge which I’d probably picked up at a pub quiz somewhere.

Newsflash (courtesy of Reddit):

The film’s closing line was a placeholder that the writers never replaced with a better line. Despite not being intended for the final cut, it became the iconic ending and is ranked 78th on The Hollywood Reporter’s list of favourite movie lines.

Part 2: ⚠️

Terry, your six-line demand for the answer to ‘What’s the name of the song, featured in a film, in which the singer bemoans the fact that…….. [and which] ends, before the refrain, with the words “You’ll find my corpse draped over a rail”?’, led me, inevitably, to Google.

I entered only the phrase in inverted commas which you’d given me, as it was the only one specific enough to use as a search term – and as a result of my ensuing trauma I have now had to delete my internet history. Every search return was either harrowing, grisly or both, and had nothing to do with any film.

⚠️
Do NOT Google the lyric. Seriously.
⚠️

So, thanks for that. And I’m sorry, but I don’t have an answer to give you!

It’s your turn. Here’s the clue for 23 Down in the Daily Telegraph from June 7th:

Insect bite coming up (4)

What’s the answer, and why?

📚 The library list

My pile of books to read has grown rather a lot recently. Having finished – and thoroughly enjoyed – A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins I bought its sequel, The Walk West, which I can’t wait to start.

The thing is, other books have been making outrageous and unreasonable demands for my attention in the meantime. I’m around halfway through Mum’s copy of the hilarious and utterly delightful memoir The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell, a British teacher who saved an avian oil-slick survivor in the troubled Argentina of the 1970s and took it to work with him at a boarding school in Buenos Aires. I’m also itching to reread Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as background to a post I’m planning.

My bookshelves are creaking under the pressure, and I know for a fact that you face similar struggles at Freedman Towers. This little snippet I found online a few weeks ago, though, does make me feel a little better about my plight:

Screenshot taken from a Huffpost article found on Apple News, June 7, 2025

I’ve been plundering virtual shelves on the Libby app, too. I used to use the real-life library fairly often in years gone by, but since I started being able to access ebooks and audiobooks online, the added convenience – not least for my wallet – is brilliant.

Libraries are such a valuable resource. Look at this:

Screenshot taken from a Buzzfeed article found on Apple News on May 8, 2025

🏋️‍♀️ Gymming and swymming

I’m impressed with the report in your letter about your gym habit, although your picture of what you claim to look like after a visit has alarmed me somewhat. I’m reproducing it here with your kind permission:

Terry traipsing home from the gym, by Terry Freedman

I used to be a member of the health club at a local hotel a few minutes’ drive from Chateau Snaps, where I’d swim early almost every weekday morning and hit the gym a few times a week. I hadn’t been near the place since before the pandemic, but this morning Mum and I met there for a swim.

As I’d reported in my recent Water baby post, I have a chequered history with swimming. It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read it that this morning’s ‘swim’ amounted only to half a length of sculling on my back, a couple of lengths of Rebecca-special doggy paddle, several lengths of strolling back and forth for leg-strengthening purposes and a great deal of chatting.

📌 FULL REPORT

Neither of us sank.
One of us broke the swimsuit spin drier in the changing room.
One of us couldn’t open her keypad-operated locker in order to get her stuff out of it.
Both of us are shattered.
We had such a nice time that we’re going back tomorrow!
AND I’M SO PROUD!

🎾 The sports column

Speaking of exercise, Terry, bip-bop season is underway: yes, Wimbledon has started! In television terms these two weeks are the highlight of my viewing year, and the first day of this epic grand-slam grass court tennis championship saw seven British players make it through to the second round. More, I hope, will follow.

Wimbledon fortnight is the epitome of the British summer, and its bingo card always features the following:

A heatwave (today the mercury is nudging 35°C – that’s 95°F)
Torrential rain (not yet, but it’s inevitable)
Plenty of appearances in the Royal Box by members of the royal family
An inside-out umbrella (see ‘torrential rain’)
Sir Cliff Richard (bonus points if he stands up and sings)
A blown-away Panama hat (bonus points if it lands on Centre Court)
Queues for Pimm’s
Queues for strawberries and cream

Ah yes, strawberries and cream: a favourite Wimbledon treat. After a fifteen-year price freeze at £2.50, this year spectators are being charged £2.70 for a portion containing exactly ten strawberries. Sounds like pretty good value to me.

I wonder if you’ve tried the strawberries and cream sandwich that’s now available from M&S? No messing about with a warm scone, clotted cream and strawberry jam; no, M&S are whacking some halved strawbs and some sweetened whipped cream between two slices of bread and calling the result the new best thing since sliced bread.*

*Okay, I don’t know that they are calling it ‘the best thing since sliced bread’, but it feels like the right metaphor for me to stick on it.

Reviews are looking pretty good, though. Perhaps I should pop to M&S to find out whether the sandwich is worth the hype?

To accompany my own Wimbledon viewing, I’d far prefer strawbs picked in warm sunshine served with an equal (or greater!) volume of nicely-chilled Rodda’s clot, thanks very much. Bon ‘bip-bop’ appetit! 🍓🎾

All the very best, as ever,

Rebecca

Dear Reader, I'm lost

Discussion about this post