Open letter to...

Dear Mr Perry,

I wonder if you can help me?

I've watched and thoroughly enjoyed your first two programmes,

All In The Best Possible Taste.

The third, on last night I've recorded, reason being I can fast forward through the adverts. Plus being slightly deaf I can rewind to hear any nuggets I missed the first time.

The problem which I hope you can help me with is this...

I think I've ridden the snake and slid down the class system.

Quite how, I've no idea.  Most folk surely would endeavour to climb the ladder?

Don't get me wrong I'm not unhappy about this, far from it!

Let me tell you a little about myself...

On my mother's side, her father Herbert came South in the depression in the Thirties

to find work.  He bought a house in Wilmington which is a village on the outskirts of Dartford.  This in itself is a mystery.  How did he get the money together, with a wife and four children to support? Hard work and saving I suppose.

My dad's father was the manager of a bank also in Dartford.  The family lived in a farmhouse on Dartford Heath.

Dad was sent to private Grammar school, Auntie 'Margarine' to the local convent.

On leaving school, Marjorie trained as a short-hand typist.  Dad was apprenticed in a local firm as a toolmaker.  His colleagues in the tool room pulled his leg about him going to work in a Harris Tweed jacket with shirt, collar and tie and beautifully ironed trousers.

In his tea break, he would sit and read Dickens.  Imagine that!

He became a fully paid up member of the Union.   Around the dining table the conversation would get heated with dad expounding the virtues of his trade union beliefs to his Tory voting parents.

Their house, a large Victorian semi, was beautiful with a rocking horse in the hall,

I had an old china faced doll and a wonderful teddy, the loss of which I mourn to this day.  

My grandfather was truly eccentric, riding a motorbike, wearing a Gannex mac and beret.  They had a Jowett Javelin car.

In his spare time he was a wood carver; happy memories for me of going to see him working on his latest carving in his shed; kittens playing in the wood shavings.

Terribly middle class would you say?

As a child we went on holiday to France and also a cruise.

A cruise in the Fifties!

Now we get to the nub of the matter... me!  I've always been large, lary and LOUD.

Do I enunciate in finest Estuary English, I wonder?

The worst swear word I ever heard my father say was  'Sod it!'  

More than can be said for me.

I've drifted through life with ne'er a care, messing about at school always the class clown.

Jobs have come and gone, far too many and various to mention.

I have artistic leanings, unfortunately not accompanied with any degree of talent.

My bete noire has always been snobbery in all its forms.

Is this I wonder because all through my life, folk have found me hard to pigeon hole?

Latterly I've given talks on my exploits.  One snooty group of the WI thought my 

talks were hard to believe and my language wasn't to their liking.

I said bloody five times in relation to a conversation I had with another.

I wouldn't mind, however if I'd told it like it really was, they would never, in a million years have believed me.  Why would I give a talk and then lie?   I'm not a politician. 


Where do I go from here, will I finish up with snake-skin slough in the gutter?


On a happier note, I love the frocks.  If I send you me vitals, will you run one up for me?


Yours,


Linda.