4/26 - Very Much at Sea

I shall begin this post with a quick look at a pair of letters from Monday. The first was from the woman whose husband's mistress applied to her company and somehow, though the questioner didn't assist her, got interviewed in another department and now the questioner is being asked to sit in on a follow-up interview. At the time of her original letter, when she would have been the one to interview HXM, it did seem that the thing to do might be to disclose personal conflict to an appropriate member of personnel. Now it seems rather odd that such disclosure isn't part and parcel of protocol for interviewers. Everything else seems to be. And those who staff Human Resources have sufficient power for evil anyway without being able to toss applications into the trash for reasons of personal knowledge, however much one could assume reasonable provocation in this case.

The second Monday question I shall consider came from the older sister of the 16-year-old girl who had made sexy recordings with her 19-year-old boyfriend. The Prudecutor was quite adamant that the girl MUST be put in full possession of all such material; I have never seen her so adamant (except just possibly about racism, which appears to be her one Unforgivable Sin, however many excuses she usually finds for homophobia despite her lip service to the contrary). Yet, if we were to turn the clock back to last July, when a LW in possession of potentially career-harming material involving an ex who'd become a celebrity very young and dumped her in a less-than-considerate manner was nreasonably hurt that she was approached by representatives instead of the ex himself, the Prudecutor gave a rather giggly sort of answer amounting to, "I can't tell you to extort him, but extort him," in much the same way that Mr Savage can't advise the underaged about how to have sex. Interesting that potentially damaging material incites the Prudecutor so much more than definitely damaging material.

Now for Thursday.

L4: Welcome to the world of male privilege. Simple suggestion: join the Lesbian Serial Killer Club and wear the T-shirt when barhopping alone. That will at least prune the timid from the ranks of your suitors.

L3: Pack a lorgnette.

L2: This letter does seem to manifest how many of today's youthful career starters only have half the requisite preparation. LW2's attitude could use a bit of improvement, though thankfully the Prudecutor went so far overboard that we shall have her on toast in the Court of Appeal. OE2 did not exactly cover herself in glory on this one, and appears at the least to have assumed that LW2 had sufficient seasoning to be able to perform the task properly and cope with any deviation from expected procedure. B2, who otherwise comes off much the best of the bunch, could perhaps have been a little more proactive than appears to have been the case, and made sure that LW2 could cope with the drill - potentially unnecessary, but not unreasonable when dealing with a new hire of youthful aspect.

L1: It occurs to me first off that we don't know for certain where LW1 actually is. The construction of the letter and the invocation ofn the L word make it reasonable to assume that the LW is male, but it is unclear whether he went off to Hawaii as scheduled, or, if not, where he might be at the moment. Did he go off on honeymoon on his own? This is not quite what happened either to Tanya in Muriel's Wedding, who caught her new husband cheating with Rose Biggs and ditched her honeymoon to join her friends on Hibiscus Island, or even indeed to She Who Must Be Obeyed when, on the cruise which she designated as her second honeymoon, the sudden appearance among the fellow passengers of Mr Injustice Gravestone caused her husband to lie doggo in the cabin, leading misguided mystery writer Howard Swainton and his personal assistant Linda Milsom to speculate that She was on honeymoon on her own. Did he remain at home? If so, how is it that he has not seen W1 or at least had some communication with her?

And there is so much else we don't know, starting with the exact time line. I'm reminded of Anne Meredith managing to pull the wool over Superintendent Battle's eyes in Cards on the Table and misleading him into thinking she went directly from A to C when during the B in between she murdered her employer. We know that F'sBF1 died the day after the wedding, but not how long after the wedding and the death L1 was written. How long after the wedding was the honeymoon scheduled to occur and how long was it supposed to last? Was postponement possible? financially practicable? Surely it makes a difference if the letter was written two or three days after the death as opposed to going on two weeks, as opposed to a month. Did LW1 ever actually meet F'sBF1? It appears that he did, but his suspicion could have sprung from what he was told by W1. If we wanted to give even freer reign to speculation, we might even ask if F'sBF1 even died in the first place, or, if LW1 never met him, if he ever actually existed.

There is a potential point against F'sBF1 being married in that F1 learned of his death so quickly. As presumably F1 was busy attending the wedding - without F'sBF1 in tow - the day before, she might not have learned of the death so immediately had he been married. She would certainly at any rate be much less likely to be notified promptly. It's certainly possible that she might have tried to contact him and found out, but that seems far from certain. I would like to question LW1 on why the point matters, although I should avoid that if I were his brief. Rather I'd comment on the suspicion in closing speeches, making the point of F1 not holding the matrimonial bond in high regard in consequence.

The Prudecutor certainly seemed full of snark on this response. Yes, LW1 deserved to be dinged on a number of points, and she actually picked up on the lack of communication between husband and wife. But why the vitriol? Her response seems dated, also, as if one were still living in the era of Virgin Brides (if not Virgin Grooms besides). And, given the almost complete want of any spouselike conduct on either side, I can't imagine why the Prudecutor would favour the continuance of the marriage. Why not annul, even if LW1 and W1 decide to start over and see if they can do the relationship properly this time? My main docking of LW1, by the way, will be based on not seeing the B-word anywhere in the letter (ditto for the Prudecutor, who gets docked double). Sexuality is not a weighted coin toss.

I shall conclude by looking into my crystal ball. It tells me that LW1 was the lucky recipient of Spiritual Guidance from the Other Side when he wrote L1 and chose the pseudonyms therein. The good news is that F1 is straight. W1 is bisexual, however, which may or may not be good news in its own right, and any continuance of the marriage would be advised to take this into account. Sorry to elaborate the obvious, but why else would he call them Sadie and Brenda?

Moral: "This is my husband." "Is it really? I am surprised."