A MAN OF LETTERS

Les examines the plaudits for a Letters page

I'm an avid reader of many a newspaper; years ago I might have turned straight to the sports pages but not anymore. Now I go at once to the Letters Page and hardly a day goes by without I come across a masterpiece which seems to echo my previously expressed sentiments exactly.

M Perry, from Buckthorn, Ely, writing recently in the E.D.P. refers to the Local Heritage Initiative who has given £24,600 to Friends of Norfolk Dialect in order to raise awareness of the Norfolk Dialect in local schools. The writer lambasted the whole concept hoping against hope that this appalling dialect, with a bit of luck, would only take another generation before it was consigned to absolute oblivion which is where it belongs.

How much I agree and as someone who has hardly set a foot outside Methwold let alone Norfolk well they don't come more "Norfolk" than I am. And yet I don't go around pronouncing "Isn't" as "Int" or "Something" as "Suffin". If I did I would only come to one obvious conclusion, I had gone stark raving mad. "Have you got a lioght bor" ; oh my God, heaven help us.

Continuing with the Letters Page but this time something a bit lighter and it comes from Patrick Newley of London writing in The Times. He comments on a report that refers to a budgerigar which apparently sings with a Geordie accent, (this is quality stuff forget this Norfolk accent rubbish) and a blackbird imitating a computer modem. Mr. Newley doesn't believe a word of it. To him it is nothing more than Ronnie Ronalde making a comeback. I first saw Ronnie at the Pilot in King's Lynn which was where they regularly had variety shows. Yes, the good old days when you could come across vocalists who could sing, such as Dorothy Squires singing, "In an old caravan there's a lady they call a gypsy". They don't write songs like that anymore and by golly could she sing.

B Stanbridge also of London refers to the seating plan for the state banquet at Buckingham Palace and poses the question, "To the uninitiated can you advise as to the whereabouts of the salt". Whereas Leigh Belcham from Felixstowe makes a reference to another report that teenagers are to be offered £25 if they behave themselves for a month. Mr. Belcharn concludes that when he was a teenager he was "good for nothing". I rather like that!

Yet another writer, the name and paper escapes me, goes on about us oldies now getting free bus travel. He suggests that, on cold winter days, we should turn the central heating off thereby saving pounds in the process and hop on to a comfortable and warm bus spending the days going from one place to the next. And when we eventually get back home, get in touch with the Council and ask for a reduction on our Council Tax on the grounds that we are hardly ever at home, and all of this thanks to that nice Gordon Brown.

I will certainly vote for him next time, in any case I've had enough voting for the Communists. What have they ever done for me, even when I was a young man?

Les Lawrence