The big news today is that I received a letter yesterday. Now, I know that doesn’t seem earth-shattering or worthy of my opening line, but as you have come to expect it will all fit into place. As a writer ( and I suppose I am a professional one as publishers pay me money to write books and then people pay money to buy them , though in both cases not nearly enough considering the number of man hours that go into them ) the first lesson you learn in writing a book is that you have to hook the reader in from the first line. I mean, we all go into bookshops, pick up a book, read a bit and if that opening paragraph doesn’t do it for us then it’s back on the shelf. Although my wife did recently get told off in a bookshop in Pinner for trying out the moving pictures in a child’s book. I say “ recently “ , but everything is relative nowadays of course.
Anyway, I get lots of letters, mainly bills and charity requests or stuff congratulating me on becoming a millionaire ( there’s always some conditionality about that one, of course ) or asking me to renew subscriptions to things I can no longer go to. In fact since I have been a shut in I’ve only had to have three letters posted. One contained a book and a packet of Mentos and a Gingerbread man to my grandson, one was a corporate thing that had to be signed and the third contained two editions of the magazine called “ The Cricketer “ sent to one of my neighbours in my Cotswold village, Diane who is also a big cricket fan.
She is a former teacher who always hated children, but not as much as she detests the cats that plague her garden. The garden is magnificent and she has created it from scratch. It’s so good ( and she doesn’t know this ) that when she goes away I put a sign at the top of the hill that leads to our houses saying, “ Garden open to the public today “ and then charge for admission. That’s the thing about living in the country. It’s allotments and gardens and village fetes and book clubs and Women’s Institutes and Knitting Circles and competitions for flowers for the church and book stands in the village shop filled with books by local authors ( the woman who wrote those dreadful Agatha Raisin books is always there …. well, not physically as she died recently… ) And extremely good manners. I mean when we do our morning walk everybody says good morning. Just like London, not !
The good manners extend to saying thank you and that’s where the letter I received comes in. Diane actually wrote me a thank you letter. Not an email (she doesn’t do emails ) and not a printed card or a scribbled note on a sheet torn from a freebie note pad from some random charity… or one of those little cards they send you when they want a donation for their Xmas or Easter appeals . It was a real hand written letter ( legible and with perfect grammar and syntax ) and I read it twice because I didn’t believe it the first time that somebody in 2020 had taken the time and trouble to do that. The art of letter writing lives on in the country anyway and the Big V hasn’t yet been born in Ambridge. Maybe the tending of allotments and the cultivating of gardens and the baking of cakes ( I must remember to talk about our other neighbours Steve and Jo tomorrow… as you will discover they are worthy of a blog of their own ) is boring the Big V into submission.
So, the excitement of the letter has faded a little. Doesn’t take a lot to excite me. I mean when I got my Freedom Pass I went on a London bus for the first time in about thirty years and phoned everybody to tell them I was on a bus. They weren’t excited by that piece of information. “ Yes, but I go on a bus every day” None of them quite understood that it was me on this bus, me the great travel snob. Anyway, I rather liked the experience . Unlike the tube, the person sitting next to you actually strikes up a conversation. And you can use your phone. I’ve never understood why mobiles work on the Russian underground system but not between Bounds Green and Covent Garden . But, then I bet the trains run on time in Moscow as well. They wouldn’t dare not to.
I’ve let go of the Nicky/Wanda story for a bit. I thought that him back in his apartment in Edgware and her living the dream in the back garden of Kirsty MacColl’s son’s house in LA was the end of it for a while. But, my son is nothing if not persistent ( wonder where he gets that from ? ) and has managed to book her on yet another flight on Sunday night back to London. Unfortunately, it’s with BA who laid off 30,000 people this week so I just hope the poor little creature ( that’s the dog and not my son ) isn’t going to be disappointed again. You can just imagine her, packing and unpacking her little bag, tucking in her favourite toys, the odd chew for the flight, a warm coat for the English weather and then her hopes of being reunited with her daddy being cruelly dashed yet again, at the last minute. Let’s hope that this time it’s a happier ending for my friend and colleague Michael Tattersall to discover when he finally catches up with the blogs. I think he’s about ten behind at the moment because as the CEO of the beleaguered National League in football he may have other things on his mind.
On the subject of dogs I did see a story in the paper in the non-Big V section of course, about a man in Seattle caught in a chase by the police after a hit and run incident involving two other cars. . He told the police that he “ had been trying to teach his dog how to drive “ In fact the pit-bull in question had been seen behind the wheel of the Buick during the pursuit and when the troopers used spiked strips to stop the car they found the “ very sweet “ ( not how I would describe any pit-bull ) in the driver’s seat. The article ends by saying that whilst the driver has been charged with reckless endangerment ( I would have thought he could have claimed insanity and said he was barking mad ) the dog has dodged a court date and been placed in the custody of an animal shelter. Some things you just can’t make up.
More applause for the NHS last night( though missed that as I was giving a rather surreal Zoom lecture at Loughborough University ) I rather liked what the South Africans did as they all came out and sang their National Anthem the other day. And that’s in three languages albeit not altogether, I wondered what would happen if we all had to go out and sing our National Anthem, or in the case of my London street ( not the Cotswolds of course as everybody is English there ) a mixture of the Greek, Turkish, Indian, Dutch and German anthems and that’s just the nationalities of people I know around me. Not sure how that would work.
Can see by the word count that’s enough for the day, need a hold back for Saturday night/ Sunday morning. So won’t mention that Chris Evans started his show with The Cure’s ‘ Friday I’m in Love ‘ one of my all -time favourite tracks . I used to be in love with Friday as a day as the week was coming to an end ,but one day is so like the other now that I can never be sure what day it actually is.
A quick mention for Marion Joseph and her son David, though. Marion is a new recruit to the blog and has got her son reading too. She called this morning and said it was nice to have a conversation that wasn’t centred around food and the number of eggs a person had left or the number of toilet rolls. It’s easy for me not to talk about food because given the fact that Sainsburys still stubbornly refuse to recognize my existence I don’t have a lot, but, as they say on Radio 2 a quick shout out again to Matt and Angela and Naomi for their shopping assistance and to Marvin and Joel for offering
A peaceful and healthy Sabbath/ weekend. Take care