The wind is quite dreadful here tonight, so we’ve had to call off the reindeer practice runs, which is quite as well as the letters are beginning to roll in and the more people we have to answer them the better. I do feel sorry for Miss MacGrammar though – I can’t see how she can possibly manage to correct all those spelling mistakes. Nick says it doesn’t matter and she shouldn’t bother providing that what they mean to say is clear, but I really can’t agree. Of course the children’s letters have plenty of mistakes, but I think Miss MacGrammar is right when she says that the letters they get back from us should set an example. It isn’t easy to keep up the standard, though. I did wonder if it might not be simpler if Miss MacGrammar wrote all the replies herself, instead of just correcting Grumbo and Tingle and the rest, but, between you and me, she just doesn’t have any flair for it, though I’d never dare tell her so. Her letters would be terribly polite and correct and I’m sure there wouldn’t be a grubby finger mark nor a scribbling out to be seen on them, but somehow, I don’t think they’d be very much fun. They’d be a bit like a letter from the bank or one about payment of council tax, however much she tried. It has taken Nick a very long time to persuade her not to alter the wording on Grumbo’s letters but to just stick to putting the spelling right, and she only consented to that because she was short of time. Well, as my mother used to say, we’re all different, and it takes all sorts to make a world.
Ethel is starting to bake the Christmas Cakes next week. I always find that very exciting. I’m afraid she has ended up back in the kitchen again – there is simply no-one else with her touch. I only hope she can be deterred from doing too much sampling of the mixture. As it is, I will have to keep Tingle and Grumbo out of the way or none of them will make it into the store cupboard, or rather, that’s exactly where they will get to – Tingle and Grumbo and the store cupboard, I mean! We did have a bit of a disaster with the early batch of mincemeat as the weather has been so warm it began to ferment in the jars. Ethel has modified the recipe and we have put the new batch in the basement where it is colder just in case.
Tingle has had an excellent idea and he and Grumbo are including a cracker joke in each of the reply letters they send, which I think is a very nice touch.
Ethel is starting to bake the Christmas Cakes next week. I always find that very exciting. I’m afraid she has ended up back in the kitchen again – there is simply no-one else with her touch. I only hope she can be deterred from doing too much sampling of the mixture. As it is, I will have to keep Tingle and Grumbo out of the way or none of them will make it into the store cupboard, or rather, that’s exactly where they will get to – Tingle and Grumbo and the store cupboard, I mean! We did have a bit of a disaster with the early batch of mincemeat as the weather has been so warm it began to ferment in the jars. Ethel has modified the recipe and we have put the new batch in the basement where it is colder just in case.
Tingle has had an excellent idea and he and Grumbo are including a cracker joke in each of the reply letters they send, which I think is a very nice touch.