You already have the D-Day tapestry, how would you like another?

I plan to re-enact the Norman invasion in reverse by playing my ukulele and singing a selection of self-penned ballads of a non-commercial nature in the footsteps of William the Conqueror.  This tour will take in many of the great man’s haunts – Falaise, Caen, Bayeux and Dives (I mean the town, rather than places of low moral rectitude).  After all, it they can invade us, it’s only fair that we should be allowed to annoy them.

My wife intends to record this tour as an embroidery.  She is a dab-hand at laid thread techniques and will also adorn the edges with modern equivalents of Aesop’s fables, such as depictions of urban myths and extracts from the Labour Party manifesto.  Interwoven will be some tableaux of a more artistic nature involving scenes between myself and my two assistants Laetitia and Nigella, who are both, interestingly enough, double-jointed.

I’d like to offer you this embroidery as a companion piece to the D-Day tapestry and I’m sure that it would add to the visitor experience in your Museum.

I have to take my mother to Portsmouth in a few weeks as she is trawling the docks in a nostalgia tour of the Southern ports in which she plied her trade the year before I was born. 

Perhaps I could pop in on Wednesday the 14^th of December at about 2.30 to chat about it?  I’ll not bring Mother as she tends to get maudlin and emotional at these times.

Thank you for you letter of the 2^nd December concerning the above matter in reply to my letter of the 26^th November, also concerning the above-mentioned matter.

It’s great to hear that someone is interested in my wife’s work.  Ever since the examiners failed to award her the City and Guilds Embroidery Diploma (923/12) on the grounds of obscenity, she has been looking for recognition.

Unfortunately, she has also had problems with copyright theft.  My friend Jolliphant’s wife is also a keen needlewoman.  She (my wife) reckons that she (Jolliphant’s wife) stole her design “Tantric in Blue” as the figures on her (Mrs. Jolliphant’s) embroidery closely resemble my two assistants Laetitia and Nigella and some preliminary sketches that my wife made whilst we were on a get-away from it all weekend at the Wolverhampton Premier Lodge.  My wife will no longer even speak to Jolliphant when he calls at the house.  What this means is that she is loath to let anyone see any of her works-in-progress, which is a shame as her “Debbie does Dallas” in the style of Jan Breughel is a master-stroke.

Alas, this means that I am unable to send a photograph of her work, which in any case is only “in progress”.  As you can imagine, putting together a tapestry 20 metres long and 40 centimetres wide takes some doing, especially when your bladder control isn’t all it should be.   At the moment, it looks a bit like an explosion in a thread factory, to be honest – the tapestry, I mean, not my wife’s bladder.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to come to Portsmouth after all in December.  Mother is proving difficult and wants to visit the doorway of Boots the Chemist, Farnborough, where I was conceived.  My assistant Laetitia was recently injured in a freak accident involving a merry-go-round horse, leaving me with less time than I had hoped.  Christmas is difficult as I normally tour the old people’s homes of the area singing George Formby songs to them, alongside compositions of my own such that hark back to that golden period, such as “Have you rinsed your vest in Omo, Mother?” and “You look better in your gas-mask than you do without”.