A shared language, so why the confusion?

I here present to you a series of letters exchanged between Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh, Matron at that well known and loved institution, Twilight Lawns plc, Retirement Home for Persons of a Better Class.

This estimable establishment is situated in Norbury-sur-Mer, a charming little village in the beautiful county that is Surrey, England.

A somewhat sporadic series of correspondence takes place between Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh, and a gentleman of unspecified vintage, a Mr Jack Lincoln-Palmistry. This chap is,,, or was, the Poet Laureate, but is now retired. The reasons for his having shuffled off the cloak of Poet Laureate are temporarily obscure, but there are rumours that, frankly, the poor chap wasn't up to the task.

There is another person in this melange, a Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh. This good lady is a Resident at Twilight Lawns plc, but is extraordinarily intelligent and talented, with the result that she has been known to be useful in many situations. She is a godsend in many social situations. In this case, she is employed in writing the responses to the letters and e-mails which Mr Lincoln-Palmistry sends to Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh.

Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh, if it were to be admitted, has far more interesting and time-consuming activities to take up her time than to burden herself with the likes of Jack Lincoln-Palmistry.

Dear Mr Lincoln-Palmistry - Poet Laureate (Retired),

I cannot imagine what you could possibly mean when you tell me that Beatrice Orme-Wilde has always had hidden talent; paper doylies and current buns. I can perhaps understand that you meant that she has a predilection of doilies or doyleys (a spelling I would have used, though from the original French, and therefore not incorrect)

But current buns? Did you mean buns in the present? Or buns that are existing? Perhaps you meant buns that are in progress…. or recent buns. Did you perhaps mean to infer that they were modern buns? Or perhaps up to date buns? Perhaps you leant towards contemporary buns?

Or then again, perhaps you meant to imply that the buns in question, being abstract nouns, were the flow, the stream, the undercurrent or the tide. But in that case, why on earth would our dear Beatrice even favour those? One would have thought that a lady of her advanced years and leanings would have been more likely to settle down with a small cake, perhaps a Battenberg, a small bread roll, with her hair in a French twist, or chignon… or even, and I hesitate to put forward this alternative, perhaps a currant bun.

Your most obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh

on behalf of

Mrs Hilda Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh (Matron)

Careful, your kind bones are showing. Your popularity will increase and lets face it sir, that has been known to flag. It is a cultured form of offence I feel that goes back several generations and is inimitably yours. You must not weaken in your resolve to hold a place within the Guinness book of records in several categories, simultaneously.

Dear Sir,

Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh has asked if I would inform you that she has never been popular. She continued in this vein, as follows:

I have never been popular, as far as I know.

Lusted over?

Definitely.

Obsessed over?

Naturally.

Discussed about at length, to no obvious or satisfactory conclusion?

Certainly.

But popular? No I’m afraid not. My groups of admirers, whether of the lusting variety, or of similar leanings, were legion, apparently. Those who obsessed, maintained their obsessions in a circumspect manner, and, as far as I know, divulged their feelings to few or no others.

The Council of Trent, when compared with those who gathered in chambers, or the forum to discuss me and my place in the natural order of things, even they had only marginally fewer numbers. But one must put that into the context of a poorer transport system, and the vagaries of accommodation for those worthy and venerable persons.

Somehow, and I can’t imagine why, it has the ring of a letter from Three Chimneys, The Green, Cobbenham, Surrey; the home at which Charlotte Bartlett spent her happiest days as a child. Perhaps Fiona, after all, isn’t of the slow learning variety, but is a member of the CountyGentry. It is a thought, don’t you know.

I take back all I have ever said in defence of correct punctuation; a lack of it, in others, makes life so much more interesting... if nebulous.

But the plot thickened. As "thick as soup", one would say.

However, what had started out as a nice little Consommé, now seemed to have descending into a rather aggressive Pottage

Dear Mr Lincoln-Palmistry, I have just received a scathing letter from Charlotte Bartlett, concerning my last letter to you. Apparently Three Chimneys, The Green, Cobbenham, Surrey is not the address of the family home of the Bartlett family. The Bartlett family, said Miss Charlotte Bartlett has written (no doubt with gritted teeth), have for millennia lived at Three Chimneys, The Green, Lesser Cobbenham, Surrey.

Isn’t it amazing how news travels?

But even more distressing than the scathing letter from Dear Charlotte Bartlett was my horror when reading your “Your popularity will increase and lets face it sir...”

Aren’t you aware, you dreadfully inadequately educated person, that you should have written “Your popularity will increase and let’s face it sir...”?

You meant to say “let us face it”, I am sure. Oh please, Mr Lincoln-Palmistry, Please, Please, Please endeavour to get your punctuation and spelling under control.

Your most obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh

on behalf of

Mrs Hilda Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh (Matron)

Dear Mr Barking-Mad-Lincoln-Palmistry (How jealous I am... I only have one hyphen, and that not even a pre-WWI hyphen

Or are you one of the Barking-Mad-Lincoln-Palmistrys... a member of the Mad-Palmistry family who trace their lineage to the Mad and the Palmistry families who originated in Barking, Essex?

But I digress. You sent a rather rambling letter to Matron quite recently, and no doubt you will remember its content. So I won’t include it all here.

You almost made it to the final paragraph without a glaring error, or perchance you inserted the sweet offerings following, as a reward to me for ploughing through your learned dissertation?

In the following, two little gems are displayed:

“Way to the witches house (I’d turn back if I were you.) and a hand points away”.

“Underneath is a sign with certain tenements expounded.”

In the first, you left out the Possessive Apostrophe in witches… The house was that of the witch, so it should have been written thus:

“Way to the witch’s house (I’d turn back if I were you.) and a hand points away”.

However, there was some confusion here, because I think you meant to convey that there was a house belonging to a single witch (the Wicked Witch of the South), but you had written witches which is the Plural of witch. Were there more than one witch? Not in your dissertation, apparently.

However, if there had been a plurality of witches, the following would have been correct:

“Way to the witches’ house (or houses, perhaps?) (I’d turn back if I were you.) and a hand points away”.

In the second, I think the word you were groping for, somewhat unsuccessfully, was tenets. A tenet is a principle, a theory, a belief, a precept, a rule, an opinion, a view, an ideology.

Tenement, on the other hand, is a block of flats, an apartment block, an apartment building, public housing, a house divided into several separate residences.

The term tenement tends to have negative connotations, and one feels that the Wicked Witch of the South, wicked as she may have been, would not have lived in a section of public housing with riff raff.

By the way, your dissertation remains flawed, not only grammatically and in punctuation and in Malapropisms, but also in an Historical and Literary sphere. I seemed to remember that the Wicked Witch did not hail from the South, as you have stated. On a minimal amount of research, I have ascertained that the lady you describe was from a more Occidental direction (My little pun)… or in Halstead Parlance, from the West.

Do I need to remind you, Mr Lincoln-Palmistry, that you hail from Halstead, Essex, and it was Halstead to which you were forced to return after you blotted your copy book whilst residing at Twilight Lawns.

Your most obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet (OnlyOneHyphen) Featheringstonehaugh

on behalf of

Mrs Hilda Plantagenet (OnlyOneHyphen) Featheringstonehaugh (Matron)

Dear Matron, or Maude, or whatever person I am writing to,

I must confess, the insertion of commas, into long sentences, is scary. When one knows the reader is addicted to correction. It is a terrifying process. It takes an awful lot of courage to live in the same Internet area let alone type anything. Surely there is a satiation point? A place at which one puts away one’s pen of correction into a nearby well and admits quietly to oneself that the world will never be free of superfluous commas and the like. Unless one is on a mission. I suspect that an error free page would give one a feeling of emptiness. A further feeling of futility would then ensue, leaving the reader dangerously depressed.

Can’t you rush to the knife draw or something useful?

Dear Mr Jack Lincoln-Palmistry,

You struck the nail (the Barnstaple variety) well and firmly on the head. All this is true.

I will return later to correct the punctuation in the first couple (or trio) of lines of your most recent missive to Mrs Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh.

Your obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh

Having returned from afternoon tea and a slice of Battenberg, I feel refreshed and ready to take on the onerous task of answering your last missive.

Dear Mr Lincoln-Palmistry - Poet Laureate (Retired),

One feels that a little assistance is called for here. In the following extract the commas are used incorrectly.

“I must confess, the insertion of commas, into long sentences, is scary. When one knows the reader is addicted to correction. It is a terrifying process. It takes an awful lot of courage to live in the same Internet area let alone type anything. Surely there is a satiation point?”

Here is my amended work. I hope you will find it helpful.

I must confess (No comma is required here.) (One could have inserted that here.) the insertion of commas (No comma is required here.) into long sentences (No comma is required here.) is scary. When one knows the reader is addicted to correction it is a terrifying process. (These two last sentences were, in fact, one sentence and so one should not have broken it with a full stop and capital latter. Or perhaps I completely miss your point and a semicolon could have appeared in the second sentence, between "correction" and "it".) It takes an awful lot of courage to live in the same Internet area (A comma, or preferably a semicolon is required here.) let alone type anything. Surely there is a satiation point?

Your homework for next period is to gather a small but representative collection of letters from an imaginary friend, perhaps someone residing in Southend-on-Sea and punctuate those letters satisfactorily so that one could understand what the poor dear might be attempting to convey.

I award you a B- for effort

Your most obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh

Dear Mr Lincoln-Palmistry - Poet Laureate (Retired),

I have marked your written expression exercise. Thank you for submitting it to me so promptly this time. As you can see there has been a marked improvement in your work, and I am sure, that in exercising the diligence you have shown here, you will very soon be writing the English language with the capability only surpassed by a bush Hottentot coming to terms with Esquimoesian/Esquimauxian (the language of the Inuit, if one has to explain).

Oh! I’m so glad I have your life to use as a benchmark. When one leads a life, interminably standing ankle deep in mud, waiting for the usual procession of transvestites to appear upon your horizon, to wander into view and then exit stage left, must sound like the zenith of life... or should I have said, the nadir. At this, my dear fellow, I can only stand and stare with something approaching envy.

However, it continues to astound me, Sir, considering the recent publication of your book: 'WRITING MEANINGFUL (BUT NOT TOO LENGTHY) POEMS FOR FRIENDS & THE MARKETPLACE’, that, as you maintain that you have the soul and the yearnings of a poet, versifier and writer, you seem to have little love, or enthusiasm for the language you use as your tool in trade. It is a glorious language, Mr Lincoln-Palmistry - Poet Laureate (Retired), and is most forgiving when it is used as a tool for levity, criticism, serious discourse or the other hundred and one services to which it can be put.

Yet your sum uses of it have been the occasional bit of whimsy, a four word reply on odd occasions and your last: "When one has a life, one has less time for trivia".

Consider the Parable of the Talents; search your brain and biblical knowledge, and see if you can recall what happened to the servant who buried his talents. The Master returned, and seeing that he had... You may continue at your leisure. You seem to have enough of that.

Your most obedient servant,

Maude Plantagenet-Featheringstonehaugh

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