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I don't know if this is cosmically significant, but when your letter popped up in my inbox I was listening to a playlist of Tragedy (courtesy of Brad Kyle): https://bradkyle.substack.com/p/inside-tracks-13-bee-gees-1979-the

Lovely pics. Great post.

I have a story myself about trying to 'unsend' email, and one about being beautiful once. I will reserve both anecdotes for my own letter rather than steal your thunder here.

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PS I meant to say, that strike graphic is pretty good.

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Thanks! It was a screenshot from the BBC News app just before Christmas - I knew I wanted to mention the strikes somewhere in a post, so I seized the moment. I can take no credit for it!

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Thanks, Terry! Looking forward to both anecdotes - I'm agog already! 😊

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I had a pet jackdaw when I was a teenager and she just adored the young Clint Eastwood. She’d stand by the screen and gaze lovingly at him with a big crest. Glad to see others share her good taste!

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Jackdaws are great characters, aren't they, Aoife? How amazing to have had one for a pet! How did that come about?

We have jackdaws here, including one with no friends, poor thing. He looks different to the others - around half of his flight feathers are white - so he's the odd one out. He loiters in the garden on his own - the big rough-and-tumble gang of jackdaws which flock by every so often are happy enough to hang out with him, but he's never welcome to join them on their adventures, so always gets left behind. He's becoming pretty tame. I say 'he', but perhaps she's a she.

How lovely that I'm not alone in my admiration for the young Clint Eastwood! I reckon your bird friend and I would have got on jolly well. 😊

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Awww yes that bird probably has partial albinism, it occurs fairly rarely within the population, occasionally all white ones show up! Sometimes young birds have very little to do and are actively looking for friends. So little to do in fact they would start a Substack if they were human😆

Happy new year, hope you have a lovely year ahead.

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Wow, an all-white jackdaw! I spotted an albino squirrel a couple of years ago - it stuck out like a sore thumb - I wonder how long creatures with albinism are able to survive, being so conspicuous to predators.

I'm imagining our stripy jackdaw on Substack now - I reckon he'd get on just fine around here!

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Every time I read one of your posts, I get the urge to travel to England (and I don't like to travel!).

Great post and I'm enjoying these letters. :)

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You should definitely come, Mark. Not as fast as the USA (yet), and quite eccentric (especially the weather). Beautiful countryside too.

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Eccentric, Terry? 😉

#morelikebonkers

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

#Nomoresothanhere :)

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Nay, Rebecca. The rule is: if you're poor you're mad; if you're rich you're eccentric. Surprised you haven't reacted to my comment about listening to Tragedy when you're email popped up. What's the point of going to all that effort to insult you?

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Gimme a chance, Terry - I've only just sat down at my desk! 😉

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OK, I'll let you off. I'm off to do some reading, after catching up on some substack reading. I wish people didn't write so much. Chortle. I've been at my desk all day, and a lot of it was spent sorting out a printer problem.

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Just read the post! Thanks a LOT for that song being in my head for the rest of the week now..... 👀

Printer problems are the worst! I had a nightmare with ours yesterday.... and then the paper ran out. Like, no-paper-in-the-house ran out. I'm disproportionately upset.

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I've got a printer problem too. My black ink ran out. It's easy enough to replace it but then I found out how much they wanted for one cartridge. It's $31. I'll have to go without printing for awhile. 😢

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I have no doubt I'd love the scenery, though some of the accents might throw me for a loop. Maybe one day.... :)

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Depends which part of the country you go to, Mark. English people can't understand people from Glasgow. Glaswegians can't understand people from Aberdeen. Posh people can't understand cockneys. Nobody can understand posh people unless you speak phonetically, eg King Cholz, Earce, earce, of coss, etc

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🤣

I have to admit to needing the subtitles when watching TV if the characters have an accent that's very different from my own.

'Earce, earce, of coss', Terry! And the perennial 'garridge' or 'garaaaaahhhhhhge' debate........

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Elaine thinks I'm incredibly rude when people on the tube start talking in a different accent, when I say to her things like "Shame he doesn't come with subtitles". She thinks I have a stage whisper. Only today she said to me that being married to me is like living with a foghorn. Nice, eh?

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Such a charmer, Terry!

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

That reminds me of one of the Chris Eccleston Doctor Who episodes where his companion asks him "If you're an alien, why do you sound like you're from the North?" to which he replies, "Lots of planets have a North." So, I always guessed Eccleston's accent was hard to understand for Brits? (I understood him just fine)

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What a great line about coming from the north, Mark! He's from Lancashire, in the north-west of England, so yes, he's got a very northern accent. I don't have trouble understanding him, and he's a really great actor!

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Totally agree! I thought he was great in "Heroes" and he's still one of my favorite Doctors.

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ROFL!

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Incidentally, I'm assuming that by "north" you mean just outside London going upwards? I never go further than the Watford Gap without updating my last will and testament. I mean, you never know...

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And don't forget those snacks, Terry. And your Thermos.....

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You'd be very welcome to pop over the pond, Mark - we're a pretty friendly lot! Thank you for such a lovely comment!

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

I don't doubt that one bit :) Who knows what the future may hold?

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Great post and oh I feel your pain (the zombie fingers) and the feeling of sadness because so few Christmas cards dropped through our letterbox. Have we really offended so many of our friends? And whoever would have thought that in England we would see temperatures of -8 degrees (must be Celsius but I’m not sure - I get so confused these days) but like you, hearing the weatherman say that temperatures will reach over 100 degrees is far more exciting than 38 degrees. When I lived in Saudi, one day the temperature reached 52 degrees - obviously Celsius ( for my clarification, not yours). I digress. An excellent post which I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you . 🙏

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Thanks so much for your lovely comment, Rosy! And LOL - we had another three cards arrive just yesterday!

I can't begin to imagine what an air temperature of 52°C would feel like - goodness me! Is dry, desert heat more bearable than humid heat, I wonder? I remember being sooooooo hot on a visit to Singapore - hot and wet was NOT my favourite combination...! (Well, I like my TEA hot and wet, but not my weather!)

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I love a cuppa tea too! 52°C was like something out of one of those eerie movies where everyone has disappeared. My daughter and I came out of our apartment and instantly felt that something was different: no children frolicking in the pool, no sun-worshippers, no gardening or maintenance staff around the compound. Then my eyelashes hurt my face each time I blinked and then the necklace I was wearing burnt my skin and it was in that instant that I realised something was going on. We turned on our heels and hot-footed (sorry...) it back into our air-conditioned apartment. It was a surreal experience but having said that, I loved living in Jeddah and still miss it today, over twenty years later. That temperature spike was very unusual and the usual mid to high thirties was absolutely fine by me.

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Gosh, that description of your eyelashes and necklace, Rosy! Thank goodness for air conditioning!

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Yes, you couldn’t survive in the Middle East without it.

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I liked everything about Singapore except the weather. But a few years ago I went to Phoenix for a week, and the temperature was 118F. It cleared up a chesty cold I'd had for two years!

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Jan 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Interesting to hear you folks use both Fahrenheit and Celsius. Here in the US they told us we'd be switching to the metric system in the 1970s, but it hasn't happened yet. I guess we're a little behind the times. : )

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Not behind the times, Ms W, just different!

It's very odd that officially we're Celsius over here, but Fahrenheit refuses to die!

It's the same with weights and measures, too - six of one and half a dozen of the other! Legally, food items have to be sold in metric weights, although you can still buy a pint of beer (if our pubs couldn't legally do that, the world would stop turning). I weigh food ingredients in grammes, mostly, but for our family Christmas pudding recipe it's pounds and ounces all the way. And I weigh myself in stone, not kilos (I think we're the only country to weigh in stones - I could never fathom people-weights in the US because you weigh in pounds, but we group our pounds together into stone. There are 14 pounds in a stone, so 150 pounds is 10 stone 10 pounds). Which is bonkers, frankly. Metric would be so much easier!

And I can't work out feet and inches... with the exception of measuring the height of people. There's no way I could work out the size of anything layout-y unless I could measure in centimetres! 🤣

Oh what a tangled web.....

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This is the first I'm learning about stones.

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Crazy, aren't they? I mean, they're just multiples of pounds! And the maths is HARD....

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Fear not, Ms Writer. Britain was discussing decimalisation in 1824, and finally did it in 1971. We were discussing a channel tunnel in 1802, and opened it in 1990. I myself once responded to a tweet 20 years after it had been sent. These things demand a lot of thought.

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Jan 8, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Haha...so true!

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So fun to read. Great post Rebecca! :)

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Thanks so much, Julie - I'm glad you enjoyed it!

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That is a pretty interesting strike graphic. Does anyone do any work over there?

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Jan 4, 2023·edited Jan 4, 2023Author

Not at the moment, Matt! It’s a tough time for a lot of people, and many unions are at stalemate with the government in relation to pay and conditions for public sector jobs.

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That's too bad. Hopefully it gets worked out soon.

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A delectable letter, Rebecca. You made me look up "turkey and Stilton soup." I have remnants of turkey in the freezer, and Stilton is easy to find. Looks like i just need some leeks? I agree with Mark M. about leaping the 'lantic to visit the UK. My Bond Girl Bride is all ready to tour the distilleries north, north, north of you and Terry. Maybe someday.

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Thanks so much, Mark! Ooooooh, a WHISKY TOUR - now you've got my attention!

To be honest, the turkey and Stilton soup was just my normal 'bung it all into the pot' remnants of Christmas dinner whizzed up with an immersion blender, with some Stilton crumbled into it right after we took the lids off our Thermos flasks! It was delicious, despite (or perhaps because of?) the lack of recipe-following......

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I can't think of the last time I sent a personal letter in the mail. That makes me kind of sad. But I definitely stress over my handwritten letters more than my emails because my handwriting is too terrible and it usually takes a few tries to turn out something legible. Email provides such an easy escape hatch, though I agree: by the time I notice I've made a mistake, and am in full panic mode, there's no way I'm going to press the right button to "undo" anything. I mean, at least if I mailed an embarrassing paper letter, I could theoretically devise some kind of clever plan to intercept it before the recipient ever read it! What could go wrong? ;-) With email, I just have to take my lumps.

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LOL - what could go wrong indeed?! I've got visions of your clever plan to intercept a misguided letter - I wonder if you'd be in disguise, and what distraction techniques you would go for? There's a brilliant future story in there!

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Haha, love it! That could be a brilliant story! :-)

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