Dear Lord Mayor,

It will come as no surprise to a man of your obvious education and wide-ranging intellectual pursuits to know that the Bayeux Tapestry was, in fact, made in your fair city.  That the French own it and flaunt it can only add insult to injury.

I see from your on-line CV, that you are a Naval man, like myself, although my water-based career has largely been confined to mirror-class dinghies on Coniston Water, due to an unfortunate growth on my left buttock, which I don't want to go into and neither does the proctologist.  We old sailors must stick together.

I intend to tour Normandy in the summer, annoying the natives by playing my ukulele and singing in order that they should feel honour-bound to return the tapestry.  I have even translated George Formby’s “When I’m Cleaning Windows into French” to help me.

If I can get the tapestry back, I am quite happy that it can return to the city in which it was made, provided Mrs. Corder and I could borrow it for a couple of months in order to bolster our pensions.

I look forward to hearing from you, although if you prefer, I will be in Kent on the 16^th of next month and could drop in around three o’clock for a chat about the above.

The Lord Mayor would have been happy to meet you during your visit to Kent but, as I am sure you will appreciate, at this time of year he has many calls to make upon his time and will be making a Christmas visit to a residential home at that time.

Thank you for your reply of the 2^nd December to my letter of the 25^th November.  I love your notepaper, especially the crown.  My friend Jolliphant, who passed his 11-plus and therefore did Latin (and coined the League’s motto), says that yours means “Hail, Mother of the English”, which is wonderfully patriotic in this age when love of one’s country is so often ridiculed.

As the Lord Mayor is at a residential home, perhaps instead of meeting him at his office, I could provide some ancillary entertainment.  I know that old people often feel the need for respite from the tedium of residential life and the over-familiarity of the staff, who always call them by their first names.  There are only so many Rich Tea biscuits you can dunk to raise the gloom.

 I mentioned in my last letter that I play the ukulele.  This is an instrument that is especially popular amongst the older age-group as it reminds them of George Formby, rationing and how safe it was to walk the streets during the Blitz.  I have even written a couple of songs of my own, aimed especially at that age group.  “Don’t wear your hat when you’re driving” and “Sitting on a Stannah Stairlift with a Cupasoup in my hand” are both cautionary songs.  The first explains the dangers of not having a maximum driving age in a non-condescending way.  The second explores how fraught combining hot liquid nourishment with vertical locomotion can be.

 If the Lord Mayor is a chap who enjoys a singalong, he might help lead some rousing choruses.  If he does, though, he should bring protective goggles as I was recently cut above the eye whilst entertaining folk in sheltered accommodation when one lady sang so gustily that her dentures actually exploded from her mouth onto my forehead.  The scar is already fading, but I would hate the same thing to happen to His Worship the Mayor

How nice to hear from you again.  It is not often that someone takes the trouble to write to compliment us on our letterhead.  I am sure your scholarly friend Jolliphant will have realised that our motto refers to Canterbury Cathedral, the "mother" church of England ...

How I wish I had made your acquaintance earlier in the year when organising a number of events  ... I arranged a tea party for 200 pensioners and had the devil of a job finding a suitable entertainer to lead the singsong.  You would have been the ideal person, notwithstanding the terrifying projectile false teeth experience from which  I do hope you are now fully recovered ... we received many letters of thanks following the events and the impact of the lack of a ukulele, though not mentioned in a single one, was surely there if you read between the lines ...