More Than Love Letters (4 page)

So what’s new with you, anyway?

Love,

Margaret x

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
1/3/05 08:07
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi Margaret, you poor thing, last night sounds quite a trauma. But this is where all your do-gooding gets you, you see. Whereas I was tucked up in bed by ten thirty. Sadly, not with Campbell, who turned out to prefer the role of sugar daddy to that of toyboy, and has cast me aside in favour of some sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in a gym slip. (Actually, I have no idea at all what a gym slip is, or was. It sounds scratchy and uncomfortable though, so I bloody well hope she
does
have to wear one!) I have now decided that in order to get over this devastating rejection I really am going to work my way through the alphabet, so am out clubbing tonight with my classroom assistant, Paula, on the lookout for someone suitably therapeutic by the name of Daniel or Dean or David . . .

Becs xxx

 

OK, ‘oriflamme’ is a 5, and ‘serendipitously’ is a grudging 4.5. But no points for ‘motley’, you can do better than that, hon. They sound like a harlequinade, at the very least.

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
1/3/05 08:09
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dougal? Darwin? Dmitri? Dante? Dhruv? Dartagnan? Dionysus? Happy hunting!

Margaret xx

 

 

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
Suffolk IP3 2DA

Mr Richard Slater, MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

5 March 2005

Dear Mr Slater,

I am writing to you again about the small park between Gledhill Street and Emery Street. Not only is the zip-wire still broken (see my letter of 10 February), but the problem of dog-fouling is getting worse. I myself regularly walk my housemate’s springer spaniel in the park, always ensuring that I scoop up behind her and place the waste in the bin provided. Other dog-owners, however, are not so community-minded as myself, and the area is becoming quite unpleasant for the children to play in. I see it as a hygiene issue.

I am sure that the provision of another bin designated for dog waste, closer to the Emery Street gate, would help to resolve the problem. I have written to the borough council about the matter, but have received no reply.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Hayton.

 

PS. I should be grateful if you could send me a proper answer to this letter, and not just another of your standard form replies. Do you even read your correspondence?

 

House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

 

11 March 2005

Dear Ms Hayton,

Thank you for your letter of 5 March, raising an issue of concern. Your view has been noted, and I can assure you that I shall be looking into this matter in the near future.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Slater, MP.

 

 

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
12/3/05 14:28
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Hi Michael,

How is life in the heady heights of the Home Office, then? Do you have your own junior ministerial office with a shiny green junior ministerial telephone and a shiny pink junior ministerial secretary? Shall I come round and see? (Do they let us rank-and-file mortals inside there?)

Of course, as you know, the Ruler Of The World passed over me again in the latest reshuffle – all for standing by my principles and abstaining in the Iraq vote! It’s all so unfair: it’s not like I haven’t put in the graft. I served my eight years on the borough council, five of them as chair of the Refuse Disposal SubCommittee. I dutifully cut my teeth by standing for sodding Unwinnable South-East, lurking in the rain like a grinning moron in a shopping centre in Leatherhead (‘Would you like to meet the Labour candidate, madam?’ – ‘No, not really.’). And I ran a tight campaign, though I say it myself: we’d got out every one of the 137 Labour promises by lunchtime on polling day. I got my golden prize: the nomination for good old Ipswich, and I even won the seat with an increased majority. I was young, I was bright, I was (if you’ll excuse the expression) thrusting: universally tipped for high office. And then the ROTW had to have that bloody war! It’s not like I haven’t tried to make amends. I’ve been so far up the Whips’ bottoms that I could see their Weetabix most days: volunteering for Standing Committees on every strand of red tape going, coming in for divisions on a Friday night when everyone else was either in the pub or on the train back to their nice warm wives and constituencies. Just how many more months in back bench purgatory do you think the ROTW has in mind for me before I am allowed to knock on the door again?

I know I should be concentrating on just being a Good Constituency MP, in the grand tradition of those down the years who’ve considered it an honour simply to serve their public. But, to be honest, what used to be the golden prize feels increasingly like the wooden spoon. Good God, it’s all so trivial! It’s all just mad old biddies with no life who write me endless letters about nothing at all. I’ve got a new one, by the way – Doris or Margaret or one of those old lady names – she writes around once a fortnight, or that’s how it seems, about all and anything. It was dog-fouling last week – actually DOG-FOULING! I thought my days of dealing with broken paving slabs and dog mess were over when I left the borough council. I thought, in my innocence, that once I was in Parliament I might get to do something real, something that mattered! Is this really what I went into politics for?

Anyway, sorry for the long rant, Michael, but if you do get a chance to whisper my name in any ears in those elevated circles in which you now move, well, I’ll owe you one, mate. Or even several.

Richard.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

From:
Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent:
12/3/05 14:42
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected])

 

Hello Richard, greetings from the Hallowed Halls. I have my fair share of constituency stalkers too, you know. There’s one who has turned up at every one of my monthly surgeries since the day I was elected, with a tartan coat and an elderly Skye terrier, both of which smell of mothballs. Never yet found out what she’s after – she always goes away before she’s called in. And now here we have our own special breed of Home Office letter-writer, too. There’s a file my predecessor kept marked ‘LFN’, which she explained means Letters From Nutters, and there are some real finds in there, believe me. One of them thinks she is the love-child of Peter Sellers, and writes twice a week to get him released from HMP Parkhurst, where she believes he has been incarcerated since 1980.

As for whispered words in ears, don’t think for a moment that the ROTWeiler ever comes near these less-than-smoke-filled rooms. I’m in office 4B on the corridor that time forgot, so unless the ear of Mrs Cadwallader with the tea trolley serves your purpose, I don’t think I can help.

You can buy me one (or several) anyway, and we’ll weep into them together. What about Tuesday night at 9.30? Call me.

Michael.

 

Michael Carragan (Labour)

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West

 

 

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich

 

13 March 2005

Darling Petey,

I’m writing this one at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea beside me, in that mug you gave me with the springer spaniel on it. I remember when you came home with it you said it looked just like Snuffy, and instead of saying thank you I said Snuffy’s ears are longer – but you didn’t seem to mind.

I’m in here because Margaret is in the sitting-room with one of the girls from that hostel of hers, Jasmin or Yasmin I think she said her name was, a very pretty-looking girl, black hair and almond eyes and skin the colour of really milky coffee. I think she’s from one of those eastern European countries, one that used to be in Yugoslavia, or maybe was part of Russia before the wall came down. Anyway, the poor little thing doesn’t speak very good English yet, I think she’s only been over here a few weeks, and Margaret is kindly teaching her a bit of reading and writing, so I left them to it. Margaret was using some of her Biff and Chip books from school, so I don’t know what the poor girl will make of them, all about magic adventures and a key that glows and makes you go small. She was showing very willing, though, and she laughed and said that Floppy (the dog in the books) looks like Snuffy, which made me warm to her, as you can imagine. I nearly said, Snuffy’s ears are longer, and then it made me think of you, and how much I miss you, and I had to come in here and get a tissue.

I suppose it’s a problem for adults learning to read another language, because most of the easy books are for kids. Sarah at the bank (you know, the young one, who’s been off travelling round the world) said she used to teach English to foreign people. She had a special word for it – something like Teflon, though it can’t be that, that’s the non-stick on frying pans. Anyway, she has a story about teaching some Japanese businessmen using a fairy story book because it was all she had, and when she asked them if there were any questions, one man asked her to give him an everyday example of a situation where he would use the expression ‘by the hair on my chinny chin chin’!

Mr Davies told us we’re going to have another refit at the bank, starting in May. So it will be all plaster dust and working out of cardboard boxes again, with the electricity off half the time and the computers down. It only seems five minutes since the last one, although when I work it out I think it must be eight or nine years – that was when we got rid of the counter and the glass and went over to everyone having their personal banker and sitting in easy chairs. Now, apparently, Head Office says it has to be back to counters, with a complicated new set-up for queuing. Dora’s Dave is back at work, but he’s still not to do any heavy lifting. Dora says, well that won’t make much difference then, not at home at any rate.

I’m looking out at the forsythia as I write, and there are a few tulips now among the daffs. And the flowers are coming out on the quince – they’re so waxy and bright orangey-red, I always think they look like the artificial ones you’d get at the florist’s. The grass is shooting up, too. Mrs Edgar next door cut hers last week, and so did number 44, so ours is the one letting down the row. Margaret said she would do it, but I can’t let her do everything, she is so helpful already. I start to wonder if she ever does anything just for
her
.

Snuffy just walked in with her ball in her mouth, and one of her ears inside out. I was thinking again how funny it is that she never notices. And suddenly I could just
hear
you in here with me, doing your Snuffy voice, saying, ‘That’s funny, everything sounds loud in here. Who turned the volume up?’ And then you’d get on the floor and flip her ear back to normal, and shake her head from side to side and call her cloth-ears. I know that Snuffy misses you too, and it makes me sad that I can’t explain to her why you aren’t here.

Well, bye-bye for now, Pete – I love you,

Cora xxx

IPSWICH BOROUGH COUNCIL

MRS BARBARA MCPHERSON, MA: DIRECTOR OF RECREATION AND AMENITIES

Civic House, Orwell Drive, Ipswich IP2 3QP

 

Margaret Hayton
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich IP3 2DA

 

14 March 2005

Dear Ms Hayton,

Thank you for your letter of 26 February, raising your concern about dog-fouling in the public park located between Gledhill Street and Emery Street. I am pleased to be able to inform you that the provision of hygienic dog-waste disposal facilities in this area is scheduled for reconsideration in 2010, as part of this department’s phased ten-year review programme of litter and dog-waste disposal arrangements in the central and west Ipswich area. I trust that this answers your query satisfactorily.

Yours sincerely,

Barbara McPherson.

 

Ipswich Borough Council – Working for
Your
Community

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
15/3/05 22:14
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi Margaret,

Do you remember, one night during our first elective teaching practice, how we drew up our patent taxonomy of parents?

Well, at Brunswick Road we have an oversupply of NESSies (Non English Speaking Smileys). I know that these are, by tradition, mostly natives of east and south-east Asia, but at our place we have quite a number from the sub-continent, too. There is also no shortage of DYTTies, that volatile and vituperative species, a branch of the genus known popularly in the US as ‘white trash’. I have encountered both the common female, with its distinctive alarm cry, ‘Don’t You Talk To My Child Like That’, and the rarer male (‘Don’t You Talk To My Wife Like That’), which can be violent if wrongly handled.

My class boasts just one MLH (or Mile-High) mum – so-called, if you remember, for her reliance upon Mother’s Little Helpers. This one is a classic specimen: one hip supporting a baby, the other itself supported upon a double buggy emitting stereo screaming, her eyes a glaze of chemical unconcern.

What we have not nearly enough of is your basic ABIEs (Always Brings In Egg-boxes).

How about your end?

Hugs,

Becs xx

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
15/3/05 22:25
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]