12/15 - The Earthquake You Just Heard

"WEARING MY PANTYHOSE??!??"

No further comment required to the Prudecutor this week.

L4: Why on earth is LW4 asking if this is normal? Who cares? It is certainly the sort of thing that anyone tolerably well-read would have come across in fiction ere now. Recall The Hours. Not only does Clarissa keep remembering her summer spent with Richard and Louis at Wellfleet during which Richard began his tentative and ultimately failing experiment with Clarissa while Louis spent most of the summer having domestic accidents in reaction, Louis, back in New York for longer than he admits, tells Clarissa during his call at her flat of the last time he went out to see the house, which had been a property of his family's. There are also plenty of returns in Christie; the first that springs to mind is making Overcliff the setting of the denoument of Elephants Can Remember. And there is always the return to Styles for the poignant Curtain. These are just examples that spring into mind in the first fifteen seconds. Do we really need an hour's list?

As LW4 is almost certainly decidedly ill-read, then I'll say not to write to letter in question until it can express the sentiments proper to the situation, something which a bit of reading might assist.

As for the other letters, they all run on a common theme - seven letters, starts with D, common occurrence in daily life (this is not that hard)...

L3: LW3 is Charmian Nicholls, another old school friend to She Who Must Be Obeyed, but of a rather more august character than Dodo MacIntosh. From the moment of being first beheld, La Nicholls exuded an air of equine superiourity. The sense of awe which she had caused to stir in the breast of the young Hilda Wystan had remained dormant during the entire course of She's subsequent marriage. Recently bereaved after the death of her husband Charlie in Guildford, Charmian had dispatched to Hilda an imperious written command to deprive dear old dowdy Dodo of her usual Christmas visit and proceeded to install herself at Froxbury Mansions. There she imagined herself to be in the company of men named Harold or Howard, all the while bemoaning the toil-worn state of Hilda's hands and insisting that what Hilda most needed by way of a Christmas present was a brand new Crock-a-Gleem dishwasher. The curious ability of the odious Charmian to make her hosts want to impress her on her own appalling terms was a major determining factor in the uncharacteristic acceptance of the brief for the Fabians when they launched a private prosecution of Christopher Jago.

I advise LW3 to divorce her husband at once. If this marriage were going to work, he clearly would have converted before the wedding, and she would only have had to pollute herself in accepting the company of those members of his family who had had the good sense to convert along with him.

L2: LW2 is the annoying wife in Yes, Dear who continually insists on providing her husband not with presents that he might actually want or goes about openly saying he wants for months before the event but instead with New Experiences that He Would Never Have Sought For Himself. Bleah. But some people don't mind that sort of thing. Where LW2 crosses the line is in insisting that her husband demonstrate the same obsession. While LW2 has not yet crossed the line, she is headed in the distinct direction of turning out to be just like Veruca Salt. Or, if I am going to wish one LW to be childless, it will be LW2, who would probably turn in a Tiger Mother-worthy performance when declaring a child's birthday card useless and garbage for not being perfectly drawn and coloured.

I advise an immediate divorce, as clearly LW2 is the sort of person who will never be satisfied.

L1: I am convinced that people will completely miss the point on this one. LW1 is WAY too late making this decision. Now is not the time. The time to work on the issue was the instant LW1 realized that this could be Serious Husband Material. Could SHM get along with Cat?

This is the Linnet Doyle Lesson all over again in a slightly different guise. Linnet met Simon and felt an impulse to steal him from her dear friend Jackie. And, as Poirot later deduced, she ended up feeling a sense of guilt because the initiative for the breakup and realignment came from Linnet herself. She had everything life could offer while Jackie's life was bound up in one person. And, though Linnet knew this, she did not stay her hand at the psychological moment. And LW1 could easily, once falling in love with SHM became a feasible proposition, have determined then whether there would be any problem about coexisting with the cat.

I advise an immediate divorce - for the cat, who deserves better.

Moral: "I have often thought that if the Son of Man had known what he was starting he would have chosen to be born on a quiet summer's day when everyone was off on holiday on what the Timson family always refers to as the Costa del Crime."