81. A letter to Terry ✒️ #17
Toques, turf, playing truant and tennis.
Dear Terry,
Thank you for your latest letter, ‘Jazz, cooking, dancing’, for which – leaving aside your robust and unwarranted criticism of the remarkable talents of Flanders & Swann – I am most grateful.
You’ll be pleased to know that I have at last retrieved my fountain pen and notebook from where they’d been languishing in the van – you’ll recall that I’d had to resort to a Bic biro and scratch paper with which to draft my last letter. I’d like to report that the handwritten version of this one is much prettier, but this evidence suggests that I’m talking nonsense:
Yup, clearly they’re both works of textual art. 😉
My pen took some cajoling back to life. Turned out that I’d abandoned it with an empty cartridge, and the hot weather – and my own wanton neglect and churlish disregard for its wellbeing – had caused it to dry up. Now that I’ve replaced its cartridge and helped it to limber up with some gentle exercises, the pen and I seem to be back on our usual good terms.
I’m impressed that you like to dress the part for your exploits in the kitchen! I’ve never worn a toque – or ‘chef’s hat’, as you called it – and am green with envy that you actually owned one. Now, I can’t operate in the kitchen without an apron: it’s not that I’m particularly messy in my culinary explorations, but somehow wearing an apron helps me to focus better when I’m cooking.
I was the same in my workshop when I had my little glass art business1. I spent most of every day down there – sometimes working, sometimes doing other things – but whenever I was working (teaching a course, trialling colour combinations or creating pieces for stock or a commission), I found I had to don my self-imposed uniform of a denim apron in order to be able to perform. Without it I found I was distracted, unfocused and fumbly, but with it, well, I was an artist.
It must be a great relief to find that your part of London is no longer at risk of being claimed by the waves now that the hot spell has diminished Puddlegate’s presence. Our water supplier gave us two weeks’ notice of the hosepipe ban they were due to impose last month, shortly before acres of turf were laid at a construction site in our rapidly-expanding village.
It's now against the law to use a hosepipe or sprinkler, but it turns out there are some permitted exceptions.
Indeed, hosepipes and sprinklers may be used for ‘watering of new lawns… where… the turf was laid before the onset of the ban, for a period of 4 weeks after being laid and when undertaken outside of daily peak hours…’
Taken from the South East Water website.
I’m no cynic,2 but it strikes me as downright cheeky to deliberately lay hundreds of square feet of turf two days before the start of a hosepipe ban of which you are aware in advance in full knowledge of the fact that you will then be granted four weeks’ grace to water it with gay abandon during a hosepipe ban. Laying turf in high summer is clearly ridiculous even without a hosepipe ban: why not time such practice for the cooler spring or autumn months? Or is that just taking common sense too far? Honestly, I despair.
You’re suggesting that I should have bunked off from the London wedding I attended recently in order to visit you and Elaine! It’s a lovely thought, Terry, but I would have to have run the gauntlet – in evening dress! – past the 6ft 8in groom and his two strapping brothers, all of whom would have noticed their aunt-by-marriage’s absence from the occasion. Anyway, you’re never in!
You see, if your posts are a genuine representation of your everyday life, you would have been:
On a bus
On your bike
At the gym
Ensconced in the library
Teaching a course
Sitting writing in a café
And if you had been at home you would either have been busy chucking up to three cats out of their comfy spots in the airing cupboard, or been nose-deep in one of the many books you have been tasked to review. In neither of those scenarios would you have likely thanked me for interrupting you!
This hot spell is all very well, but I can’t say I’m enjoying sharing my four walls with quite this many houseflies. I asked Jim earlier to find me a fly swat while I kept watch on the noisy four-engined critter that I’d cornered in the kitchen, and after a few minutes of noisy rummaging in an impressive succession of drawers he presented me with this selection of items to choose from:
The buzzing interloper promptly passed out in a fit of uncontrollable laughter and could therefore be removed without my recourse to such amusingly inappropriate weaponry. Still, mission accomplished!
Do you enjoy watching the tennis? I don’t follow many sports, but I make an exception for Wimbledon fortnight – I think because I grew up watching it.
Outside of school and work hours, for two weeks in high summer the sitting room curtains would be drawn to shade the TV screen, and given that there was a household rule that we couldn’t be doing nothing during daylight hours – and were certainly not allowed to put the telly on, unless there was a royal wedding or something – we would have jobs to do while we were watching the tennis.
Folding washing
Pairing socks
Ironing the hankies, napkins and tea towels (when we were little we only got to iron the flat stuff)
Hulling strawberries
Shelling peas
Podding broad beans
Even today, the smell of broad beans makes me think of tennis.
I’m not growing broad beans in my garden, so my chore of choice when I’m watching the tennis – because rules is rules, Terry, and they apply just as much in this house as they used to at home – is the ironing.
Still, my decidedly less-than-sporty runner beans are progressing at a fairly consistent saunter up their bamboo poles. I started them pretty late, sowing them straight into the ground in May rather than planning ahead with pots and the like way back in March, but I think they’re getting on okay. Well, they’ve got flowers at least, so I might be in line for a modest harvest in the fullness of time.
Terry, I wish I had greener fingers. Mind you, I was struck by this news headline last week, and it terrified me:
So, perhaps I’m right not to mind my runner beans not being the natural athletes that the name on the seed packet claims them to be. I certainly don’t want their stems stretching to hundreds of feet.
As far as the tennis is concerned, I’m just as interested in the players as the game.
Wimbledon has introduced me to a fascinating crowd of characters over the years, and just like the ever-changing assortment of Broccoli’s Bonds in the 007 film canon, each represents a generation. Borg and Conners, Becker and Lendl, Federer and Nadal: each champions of their time, and all with their own personality traits and ways of playing the game.
As for those Bonds, smooth Roger Moore, of course, was gorgeous, but lacked iconic Connery’s gravitas. The arrival of Dalton’s name on the film set call sheet coincided with a long-overdue pulling up of Bond’s misogynistic socks, but I’m sorry to say that both he and Brosnan left me cold.
And just like the Bond films, tennis too has its villains.
‘No cheering for McEnroe!’ I remember Granny scolding me as we sat in 1980s curtain-shaded darkness podding those beans. ‘He needs no encouragement for his bad behaviour!’
Caught off guard a few moments later, the beginnings of an errant ‘HOORAY!’ from me became ‘HOORAY…BOOOOOOOOOO’ at the moment I realised the winning ball had come not off Borg’s racket, but McEnroe’s. Granny frowned.
I made myself scarce and put the kettle on. As indeed, Terry, I’m about to do now. There’s a match I’d like to catch, and in the absence of any broad beans to pod I’m going to get on with the ironing.
Game, set and match!
All the very best, as always,
Rebecca
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I wrote this post about my glass art business last summer:
Who am I kidding?
Another wonderfully entertaining post, Rebecca and oh you took me back to my childhood when you said we were only given the flat stuff to iron - I could hardly reach the ironing board as a youngster but loved feeling grown up enough to iron hankies, tea towels and pillowcases! Oh, those heady days of youth came flooding back!
Another marvellous letter, Rebecca. As for my whereabouts, if I knew you were coming to London I would post a series of clues so you could locate me.
Love the tautogrammatical subtitle. I'm not sure if that's a word but it is now. It means all the words begin with the same letter. I will respond further in my own letter next Wednesday. X