Did you know that Rebecca Holden and I write a letter on Substack to each other on Wednesdays? Well, we do, and this is the latest one from me to her. Read on for a jolly good chortle.
Yo, Becks
How’s it hanging? Many thanks for your last letter. I’m sorry my reply is somewhat late, but I have good reasons.
Firstly. brother Willow has a respiratory infection. We have to take him to the vet every day for 56 days for him to get his meds. (We can’t do it, and it sometimes takes two nurses to do it.) He is getting mightily fed up with it:
Cartoon of a cat and signpost to the vet, by Terry Freedman
As if that wasn’t enough, when we came back from a memorial service recently, tired, a bit drained and hungry, Elaine noticed that Minty’s foot was swollen:
Cartoon of Minty with a swollen foot, by Terry Freedman
So Elaine renamed her Bigfoot and hot-footed it to the emergency vet. One day and £300 later, Minty was bouncing around as if nothing had happened. (But the name Bigfoot has remained.)
You don’t want to buy a couple of cats, do you? One careful owner.
I was also up against a tight deadline: reading and reviewing four books in as many weeks. That might not have been so bad but (a) the heat was such that I found it hard to think and (b) these books are incredibly long: I’m talking 500 pages give or take.
Cartoon of pile of books, by Terry Freedman
Why? Surely it’s possible to say what you need to say in, I dunno, a side of A4?
Mind you, I have to say that the books were very interesting:
Here’s a quick run-down of them:
The Great Exchange is about the development of news. It’s a fascinating account, and has little to do with newspapers or technology. It provides a great insight into commerce and social relations.
The Illusionist Brain looks at how the brain works, and how it is that magicians are able to (almost literally) pull the wool over our eyes. It’s well-written, and much better at explaining the functioning of the brain than any of the textbooks I’ve read on the subject.
Nature’s Memory is concerned with how natural history museums are organised, and how their artefacts are constructed and labelled. For example, I had no idea that some of the skeletons of dinosaurs and related animals are, in fact, best guesses, based on our knowledge of the human skeleton.
Stranger than fiction examines a handful of iconic novels over the 20th century (starting in the 19th as it happens). It’s a really rich experience, because the author makes many connections between a work in question and other works, plus biographical details of the author and the social and political situation prevailing when it was written.
On the subject of reviews, Penguin very kindly sent me the published edition of Hard Rain Falling, which is a lot easier to handle than the proof copy!
Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
I’m very grateful for both, and I will be writing a review of it. I am enjoying it so far despite its darkness. I think the reasons are that (a) it depicts a world I am quite unfamiliar with (small town America and pool halls), and (b) there’s no fancy language. Let’s put it this way: Nabokov it is not. I mean, there’s none of this kind of stuff:
…a distant line of trees in the night, the palette of maple leaves on brown sand, a small bird's cuneate footprints on new snow.
What?
There’s no long-winded Shakespearean guff about the morn in russet mantle clad walking over the mist of a distant hill. Give me a break. No, this book tells it how it is: stark, plain, relentless.
This appeals to me because I think writing should reflect the way people actually speak, especially in a modern work. I mean, are we to believe that Nabokov really spoke like that?
Mrs Nabokov: Hey, Vlad, what do you fancy doing today?
Nabokov: I thought maybe we could look at some birds’ cuneate footprints in the snow, and then go for a latte.
A musical interlude
There will now be a short intermission. I hope you enjoy this video of Dudley Moore playing the Colonel Bogey march in the style of Beethoven:
Fruity sandwiches
Your piece about fruit sandwiches reminded me of one of the culinary non-delights I was faced with when I visited Amsterdam many years ago: chocolate spread sandwiches. Yecccchhh!
Crosswords
I was impressed with your tackling of an Iliad-related crossword. Well done! Your Jabberwocky clues were great. I had an inkling of the answers, but to be honest I couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag1 at that time, thanks to the heat and two feline layabouts.
My marking
So you think my marking of your homework was harsh? Pffft! You don’t know what the word means. When I was a skool teacher I refused to mark one boy’s essay because he handed it in an hour late2. He never did that again, and nor did anyone else.
Here’s another tale from the chalkface:
Me to Year 9 class (14 year-olds): Well, I’ve written your end-of-term reports, and now all I have to do is mark your exams.
Pupil: Wait! How could you write our reports before you mark our exam papers?
Me: Oh I see. You think I should mark the exams first?
Pupils: Yes!
Me: There’s no time for that.
Pupils: How can you give us an accurate grade then?
Me: I allocate grades at random, by throwing a dice when I come to each name. Then I put that grade on the report. It saves a lot of time.
Pupils, amid uproar: But that’s not fair!
Me: Of course it is, because it means that everyone has an equal chance of getting a good grade even if they’re useless at the subject.
Sometimes I worry that I permanently traumatised those kids. <Snigger.>
And on that note, Becks, I shall love you and leave you. To anyone reading this missive, you can see the whole archive here. Rebecca should reply next Wednesday, so make sure you don’t miss that by subscribing to hers.
Thanks for reading!
Yours chortlingly,
Terry
This was originally published here, on my Eclecticism newsletter. Subscribe for free for more chortles.