60. A letter to Terry ✒️ #10
Political progress with potholes and some novel ways to document our lived experiences.
Dear Terry,
Thank you for your latest letter. You began graciously with an apology for its belated delivery, which was kind but absolutely unnecessary. For one thing, you’d have to do a lot worse than that to even equal – let alone surpass – the delayed delivery times we were all suffering while Royal Mail were on strike at the end of last year, and for another I was grateful that your tardiness had allowed me an extra week of breathing space in my writing schedule!
However, your name is still mud with Housekeeping here at Holden Towers, the members of which department will not stop complaining about the state of the office, covered as it is with the copious rubbings-out resulting from my having to erase nine months’ worth of my Substack posting schedule in order to reallocate ‘my’ Wednesdays. It took me an age to write it out again, too. In many ways it would be an advantage to digitise my schedule, such as it is (that’s a pretty long word for a messy two-page spread in my bullet journal), but I’d have to do that in addition to, rather than instead of, my beloved analogue planning system. Yes, that planning system that is supposed to save me time and effort!
Your illustrations of Puddlegate are becoming ever more alarming. In your next missive I am half-expecting a Terry-drawn replica of the poster for Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’. Warn me first, would you? I love a scary fish movie as much as the next person, but only if I’m expecting to see it.
Well, just when this little ducky had thought it was safe to get back into the water, this pothole puddle was barely deep enough to accommodate it. Even so, it’s looking pretty chipper – perhaps it’s seen some water coming its way in the weather forecast? Because what would April be without its showers?
Speaking of potholes, have you noticed that this issue has come across the radar at Number Ten? I hope for your sake that Mr Sunak will soon be earmarking the site of Puddlegate for similar attention.
In other local news, the weather has today turned a corner – at least during daylight hours. Here’s proof:
I wore a short-sleeved t-shirt at the weekend for the first time this year, but only because I was doing a whole load of cooking, pausing only for stints at the steaming ironing board. Arriving in an area of more sensible household temperatures when I went upstairs to bed on Sunday, the thermal shock nearly killed me. I’m glad to report that I was revived by the swift provision of two hot water bottles, showing that Housekeeping had forgiven me for all those rubbings-out and was feeling at last more charitable.
Terry, the map that you had drawn of your day in London, reproduced with your very kind permission below, was absolutely terrific. That’s a fantastic way of recording a day in one’s life – I’m going to give this a go myself, to make a kind of pictorial diary in map form. In fact, I will have several hours to spare* one day soon in a town I don’t visit often, and given that I shall be on foot, will have time to myself and a little list of places to go, including an exhibition I’m really looking forward to, I might just have a little go at recording my own movements in this way. Thank you so much for the inspiration!
*Many would have written ‘several hours to kill’ at this point. I hear that a lot. You know, ‘I had time to kill’. What you think about that? I have to say it breaks my heart. Time is such a precious commodity, and the older I get, the more I feel it. The very last thing I want to do is kill off what provides me with the space and breath to make the most of my life!
Maybe I’m getting a little deep here? I’m sorry. But time is so valuable.
You mentioned Samuel Pepys’ diary – in fact, you called him ‘Sam’! Know him personally, do you? You’ve reminded me of an interesting discovery I made last week as I was finishing the general knowledge crossword in the Saturday Telegraph. I always learn something – usually several things, in fact – from that crossword, and this week was no exception. Here’s the clue which had caught my attention:
53. From the Latin for “night”, a journal of one’s thoughts and what passes during the hours of darkness, as opposed to a diary of the day (8)
Well, I’d never heard the term ‘noctuary’! I wonder whether any noctuarists have ever published their night-time ramblings? I’ll tell you now that I never will – I keep my notebook by my bed, and if I do wake up in the night with a great idea (or a bad one) which I want to write down, in the cold clear light of the next morning my pages of tatty scrawl reveal only rubbish. Perhaps that’s the attraction, though? Who knows?
Pepys was a diarist, and I wondered whether I might find any published noctuarists out there. I’ve just Googled ‘published noctuarists’ in the name of research, and to my disappointment the limited results suggest that they’re not really a thing:
You’ll notice that it says ‘About 3 results’. The first was a link to someone whose Pinterest username is ‘Noctuarist’; the second was a link to the same person’s Instagram account. The third (of the ‘about 3 results’, remember) – and this made me laugh, Terry, because the search term I used had included the word ‘noctuarists’ – was this:
That’s right: a search that Google counted towards finding results for the term ‘published noctuarists’ did not even contain the word ‘noctuarists’. And to think that I’d been worried about my powers of recall powering down – Google can join me on the slippery slope of ageing!
I enjoyed the paragraph in your letter which you’d entitled ‘Growing’. I’m not growing anything yet – except older (see above paragraph) – but I’m impressed at the rate at which Elaine’s potatoes are chitting. I must sow my runner beans…
Your reading list is impressive, Terry – I’m not sure I could cope with reading six books at the same time! Having said that, I do have more reading on the go than I ever used to.
I picked up my favourite book, ‘Three Men in a Boat’ by Jerome K Jerome yet again last week to remind myself of a passage about the reliability of the weather forecast when I was researching my last post, ‘Be bold: start cold’, and decided on the spot that I needed to read the entire book yet again. It’s such a hoot – have you read it? I’m also enjoying ‘Ghosts’ by Dolly Alderton, and with these two on the go, together with all the fabulous stuff I’m reading on Substack, I’m really enjoying where my reading is taking me.
Next on my reading-for-pleasure list will be my third Mary Lawson novel – I’ve enjoyed both ‘Crow Lake’ and ‘A Town Called Solace’, and I’m looking forward to getting started on ‘Road Ends’, which I’ve been saving for these lighter evenings now that the clocks have changed.
Lawson’s storytelling is delightful: ‘Crow Lake’ is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about the members of a family after a tragedy, and ‘A Town Called Solace’, which I’d considered initially to be a slow burn, is made up of disparate strands following the lives of three individuals, their life journeys braided together into a wonderfully satisfying and robust string of a story. ‘Road Ends’, Terry, has a great deal to live up to!
Forgive me for finishing this letter with the excuse that it’s time for a cuppa. This morning I found myself having to nip out to the campervan to fetch our travelling kettle when I couldn’t get the one in the kitchen to work. It turned out that when I’d been putting a stack of trays away underneath the countertop I’d inadvertently switched the plug off at the wall, which is something I only discovered when I went to plug in the other one…
Cheers to tea, and cheerio until next time,
Rebecca
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You’re amazing Rebecca. I have learned three things (at least) from this:
1. The brilliant new word to describe the activity (if not the vessel) when I write a note in my phone at 2am.
2. The fact that Substack will tailor cover pics in the manner of Dall-E. What a terrifying world we soon will (already do?) live in.
3. That I must start doing the general knowledge crossword.
Thank you 🙏❤️
Ooh, I'm intrigued by the concept of noctuarists. I can't say I do my best writing in the middle of the night, but it's definitely... different. I think a collection of such writings would make a fascinating study! Too bad no one has published any. Brilliant thoughts in the shower, however, are a different story ;-) I wonder if there is a latin-based term for showerists?