63. A letter to Terry ✒️ #11

Shhh! On schooling, Schwarzenegger and the search for Spock.

Dear Terry,

Thank you for your latest missive: I always enjoy reading your letters, and your last – containing as it did the outline of the course you have recently devised – was no exception.

In fact, I am fascinated by the proposed content of your course in ‘Advanced Drivelling’. I gather from your advertising text that as a participant I would expect to learn the following:

• How to witter on in a similar vein for hours;

• How to take charge of every conversation while saying little or nothing of consequence;

• How to turn the creation of persiflage into a fine art.

As I had commented on the publication of your course advertising copy when it hit the public domain this time last week I feel I am already richly qualified in the ‘taking charge of every conversation’ module, having done exactly that in every conversation in which I have ever participated over the past 45 years.

Photo by Izzy Park on Unsplash

However, I am not going to ask for a reduction in your course fee: I am aware that you know your rights because you keep telling me, and I know that refusal often offends.

The ‘how to witter on in a similar vein for hours’ part: now, Terry, are you sure you’re qualified to teach this? You have persisted in changing the subject of your letters every paragraph since we embarked on our correspondence in December, and the very name that you picked for your own Substack newsletter suggests that you are actively against wittering on about the same thing:

Eclecticism
noun. /ɪˈklektɪsɪzəm/
The fact of not following one style or set of ideas but choosing from or using a wide variety.

For this reason I feel you might struggle to get across the crux of your own curriculum: your newsletters contain (by definition, might I remind you) the antithesis of ‘similar vein’.

#fail 👎

This leaves only the last part: ‘How to turn the creation of persiflage into a fine art’.

I had overlooked the indefinite article in my first reading of this bullet point, and, keen not to hang around, immediately set about turning persiflage into fine art.

Persiflage as fine art: light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter, by Rebecca

Taking the above into consideration, I assume that I have already passed the Advanced Drivelling course with flying colours without the effort of attending any classes. Please send the promised badge to Holden Heights at your earliest convenience.

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You have asked me why the prime minister is worrying about potholes. Terry, I’ve no idea. It is not for the likes of me to pass judgment on his priorities when it comes to matters of state.

I was pleased to learn from your letter that Arnold Schwarzenegger had taken it upon himself to take care of the road surface in his own neck of the woods last week, but I gather from this news story the following day that all had not been as it had seemed:

Ooopsie. Screenshot taken from the Apple News app.

The potholes in my lane remain overlooked by the likes of both Sunak and Schwarzenegger, but they’re not being ignored by the local wildlife. Unlike in the example in my previous letter there is no rubber duck in attendance, but this pothole has been taken over as a communal bathtub by a community of house sparrows.

Three traffic calming measures in one: birdlife, potholes and a sleeping policeman (that’s what we Brits sometimes call speed humps).

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Your use of the word ‘clement’ in your letter got me wondering, Terry. I have heard the term ‘inclement’ in reference to our British weather a thousand times, but rarely have I come across the word without its prefix.

Is it one of those words that doesn’t exist in common usage without a negative prefix?

Inclement ✔️
Clement 🤔

There are others in this vein. For example, it’s been a long-standing ambition of mine to one day become socially ‘ept’.

Yet to my disappointment, Terry, I’m fairly sure that the word ‘ept’ in isolation is not a thing. ‘Ept’ has a choice of prefixes, yes, positive and negative, but – in common parlance at least – it doesn’t seem to exist without one:

Adept ✔️
Inept ✔️
Ept 🤔

I’ve long loved this article entitled ‘How I met my wife’ by Jack Winter, which was published in the New Yorker on July 25, 1994.

Here’s a short extract:

‘…when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.’

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You asked in your letter whether I keep a diary. I’m afraid that apart from on a couple of occasions as a child, when I had been asked to make a record of what I’d got up to on holiday, I’ve never had the habit of keeping a formal diary as such. Had I had the drive and self-discipline as a youngster to have kept diaries, I’m sure I would have found it an education to go back and read them now.

Sadly I have repeatedly failed to locate the diary I kept in October 1982 on a week-long trip to New York City with my family. I wrote a report at the end of every day, and stuck in leaflets and ticket stubs and the little metal badges we had to wear to show that we’d paid to get into the United Nations building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It contains a black and orange sticker announcing ‘I RODE A CAMEL AT THE BRONX ZOO’, a snapshot of the beautiful Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park, and a three-photographs-high picture of the Empire State Building, selfishly too tall a landmark to have fit into a single frame.

I still have the memories, though, and in the case of that trip, those are the special parts.

I don’t have such great memories of the single trip for which I do still have a written record. When I was twelve my parents arranged for me to go on holiday for two weeks with other young people with type 1 diabetes, in which I learned a whole lot about living life with a new, unwanted and forever companion, the condition with which I’d been diagnosed the previous year. However – and this perhaps shows that I’ve always struggled in the company of others – I didn’t have such a great time socially, finding I had little else in common with most of my fellow holidaymakers.

I’ve dug out the diary that I was made to keep kept during that fortnight. Although I’d remembered a non-highlight of the trip – having to watch the video of ‘StarTrek III: The Search for Spock’ – I had forgotten why the staff had seen fit to put us through such trauma. Reading the diary, however, I’ve been reminded that StarTrek had been the running theme of the holiday, with all of us being divided into four teams named after different characters in the TV series.

Extract from my holiday diary, August 1987.

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In many ways I haven’t changed in the ensuing three and a half decades: for instance, I am still wildly antisocial, and I still feel minded to write down everything I eat. Oh, and I’m still not into StarTrek…

Extract from my holiday diary, August 1987.

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Speaking of holidays, what’s the weather like in your neck of the woods at the moment, Terry? We’ve just arrived home from a few days away in the van: despite having the highest tog sleeping bag available in my price range I thought I was going to freeze solid in the early hours of this morning! Still, the day dawned bright and clear on the campsite, and with the sun streaming through the van’s windows all the way home earlier today I could kid myself that summer was on the way. Well, I’m home now, and it’s not. I hope it begins to warm up pretty soon, or I shall be lining the van in bubble wrap.

Do write back soon, won’t you? Please send me some sunshine while you’re at it!

All the very best,

Rebecca

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this letter to Terry, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you! My next ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ post will be published as usual on Saturday. See you then!

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 on alternate Wednesdays, and I really enjoy our light-hearted correspondence! You can access both Terry’s letters and mine using the index below:

An epistolary index: Letters to Terry

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