Letterless

Welcome to my fourth Substack.

For those of you who ‘tune’ into this in the hope of reading one of Mortimer Merriweather’s acclaimed and erudite letters on improving the game of golf, I’m afraid to say that you will be disappointed this week. Obviously, after less than a month, I’ve not run out of letters. And with 99 in reserve, neither have I begun rationing them. So what’s going on?

I’ve had an idea, which in itself is not unremarkable because I average fewer than two genuinely original ideas a year and here we are in mid-February and I’ve already had one. I hope you will like it. Well, I shall not keep you waiting any longer. My bold new idea is to write, say, once a month, an entirely new, never-seen-before, Mortimer Merriweather letter and share it with you right here. That should silence those critics who say that I’m merely re-hashing what’s already in my remarkable book, ‘Two Ruddy Ducks and a Partridge in a Pear Tree’ which is, of course, available in all good bookshops and on Amazon at the remarkably low price of £9.99.

Not only will the new, never-before-seen-in-public letters give you, my loyal followers, something that no-one else has but it should also oblige me to power-up my grey cells which, at my advanced age of 77, can be no bad thing. Furthermore, access to a batch of wholly new letters, holds out the extraordinarily exciting prospect of ‘Two Ruddy Ducks and a Partridge on a Pear Tree – Volume Two’, which will be available... etc.

Whether my publisher (I love saying that) will be salivating at the prospect of another book when a fair chunk of Ludlow is presently taken up with unsold copies of the first one, is a moot point. Perhaps the lovely Karen, whom I believe is a faithful follower of this Substack, would care to comment. I would certainly welcome comments as they would at least demonstrate to me that the world is both paying attention to these musings and a portion of the global population, admittedly only a tiny fraction, is stirred into action by them. After all, although it bears my name and is led by me, I like to think that it will develop into a truly democratic forum where right-thinking people air their intelligent thoughts. Or is that too ambitious?

Finally, before I finish this letter-free posting, I’m going to make a bold, some would say needlessly rash, prediction. No, I’m not going to say that manager-less Spurs will win the Champions’ League or that Keir Starmer will have resigned by Easter, but I am going to predict that next week’s Substack will feature the first of my new-look letters. Is that bold or what? You see, I’m a journalist who craves a deadline. How else am I going to get the juices flowing?