Readers Letters

Since I have become a famous blogger, I have started to receive a lot of correspondence in the form of letters from my readership. In fact I have so much that my sacks are quite literally bursting, and need to be emptied.

Sadly I do not have sufficient time to reply to all of you individually, therefore I thought today's entry might take a "Points Of View" style approach to give me a chance to answer some of your letters. Here goes, kicking off with a response to my recent Aldi entry.

Sir,

As a fellow afficionado of cheese snack products, I was most interested to learn of your exciting Cheese Puff discovery as mentioned in your recent blog about Aldi. Full of excitement I rushed down there this morning to buy some, sadly I was very disappointed to discover that they were out of stock. Apparently a rotund man in his late 30s/ early 40s had been in shortly before me and cleaned out the store of their complete stocks. I was very disappointed, however the manager did say that they would be having another delivery into store overnight next Wednesday, so I plan to call in Thursday morning to get some. 

Dogger Suddaby, Bicester

Out of stock - come back next week.

Dear Dogger,

I am very sorry to hear of your difficulty in obtaining your extruded corn cheesy snack products. The best advice I can give you is to make sure you get down to the store before 9am next Thursday morning, as I have it on good authority that the "rotund man" will be calling in again next week shortly after the school run.

Moving on, as I feared my charity posting did indeed stir up a hornets nest - here is one of many letters I have received on the subject.

Dear Bicester Blogger,

I was absolutely disgusted with your recent remarks regarding charitable donations. I will have you know I give my time freely two days a week to work in one of Bicester's thriving charity shops, and I think everyone should follow my example. It is a most rewarding experience and you really do meet the most interesting people. In fact I enjoy it so much I wish I could do it all the time, but I am reluctant to ask my manager for an increase in hours as I don't want to appear over-ambitious.

Yours
Queen Of The Superficial, Bicester

Another satisfied customer...

Dear Jo,

Good news! I was so impressed by your letter, I have done you a huge favour. I rang the manager of the shop to tell of your dedication, and the good news is they have agreed to increase your hours to 40 a week, with immediate effect, starting from next Monday.

This next one was quite hard to transcribe as it arrived in a barely legible scrawl on the back of a fag packet, but I have managed to decipher most of it.

Oi mate!

Wotcha think you're on about saying wot England can't win the football. Faarrkkk off mate...we're the best in the world we invented football, innit! Anyway - The Sun sez we can win it so that must mean we can...me and my mates are going down the boozer tomorrow to watch us beat Sweden so wot do you know...Come on!!!! ING _ ER _LAND, ING _ ER _LAND, ING _ ER _LAND...

The lads from the pub (picture enclosed - I am the one with the blue shirt in the middle).

The great misguided...

Dear lads from the pub,

I hope you enjoy the game. Please don't break anything if by some quirk of fate the Sun's prediction turns out to be wrong.

Staying with the subject of newspaper predictions, this next one comes from another of our esteemed daily publications.

Dear Jason,

I work for the Daily Express, and I am most annoyed that you keep singling out our paper for criticism of our weather related headlines. I would like to point out that we do not have weather headlines every day as you suggest - in fact there were only four last week. Our weather stories are painstakingly researched, and from the most reliable of sources - there's this old geezer, Arthur who works in despatch who swears by his seaweed, and he claims that his predictions are even more accurate than those of the met office. OK, so last week's predicted hurricane turned out to be little more than a fairly breezy day, but Mrs Miggins, out tea lady did tell us that one of her husband's socks came off her washing line, so we were right to issue the warning.

Yours sincerely

The Editor, Daily Express.

A typical Express front page

PS: While I am on, just thought I should let you know, old Arthur has just warned me that we are expecting a major snowstorm in the second week of Wimbledon fortnight, and there's the possibility of 10 foot snowdrifts across southern England. We are going to run the story tomorrow, but in return for no more criticism from yourself, I thought I'd let you know early so you can get down to Tesco before the panic buying starts.

Dear Editor,

Many thanks for the heads up on the snowstorm, and please keep up your well-informed weather headlines, where would we be without you?

And finally, here's one all the way from south west England.

Dear Mr Ayres,

I write with regard to a major accident which occurred on the northbound carraige of the M5 on Friday 18th May. Whilst no-one was seriously injured in the incident, the resulting blockage led to the motorway being closed for many hours in both directions. We have no idea what caused the accident, however having now sifted through various items removed from the scene, we believe the enclosed may belong to you.

Yours sincerely

Chief Constable, West Somerset Police.

Ah - thank-you much for returning it! I wondered where it had ended up.

Keep those letters coming in and we will try and answer more in a future edition.

If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.

Jason xx