The Following is the text of a Letter from Uncle Val by Andy Jones. This letter aired on Newfoundland and Labrador's CBC Radio Weekend Arts Magazine this morning. Uncle Val is one of the best loved of Andy Jones' characters. If you don't know who Uncle Val or Andy Jones are, stay tuned to this Blog and all will be revealed. Like the upcoming release by Rattling Books of a collectionf of Letters from Uncle Val and the upcoming stage show, An Evening with Uncle Val at the Resource Centre for the Arts (LSPU Hall) in St. John's, Newfoundland.November 25 1986 (Tuesday)
Dear Jack,
Thank you for your letter of the thirteenth. Well, I’m still here in St. John’s. Sometimes I feel like writing to you and saying "help I am a prisoner in St. John’s". But I know you’d think there goes that melodramatic old fool again. But I’m quite serious. People in St. John’s are very strange. They keep saying things like: ”There’s nothing like a cup of tea in the woods”’. I mean, they say that quite often. I keep picturing a cup of tea all by itself in the woods. And I agree there would be nothing quite like that.
I have now moved in with my daughter Margaret.
Of course she had to marry a man from St. John’s. As you know I tried to stop her from marrying Bernard but I could not at that time present a coherent case. It was more instinctual, I guess. I instinctually hated Bernard. Bernard is in Insurance ... insurance is in Bernard ... In fact I believe Insurance is Up Bernard. He walks kinda funny.
My only comfort these days is a friend of mine across the road who’s from Bonavista Bay. Occasionally we sit in front of the TV and cry our way through "Land and Sea". Bernard thinks "Land and Sea” is beamed in from another planet.
And their youngsters. Oh my oh my. Jimmy and Kimmy. Rhyming youngsters. Children are funny in St. John’s. Here they learn by "asking questions"... Now in our day, Jack, you did not ask questions --I mean you had questions inside you but you had to sit around the kitchen until someone accidentally expelled an answer which you then joined to a question jigsaw style. Sometimes in the old days there’d be three or four youngsters sitting on the daybed and someone would let fly with a piece of information --you could almost hear the wheels turning and their little eyes would glow with sudden enlightenment . "So”, they’d think, "that’s how Elizabeth come to be livin’ at the Pottles!" Often that was how Elizabeth herself found out. And in those days children ran messages. That was their job. And in return they were allowed to sleep indoors.
But nowadays it’s all Spiderman and Dukes of Hazzard and Chef Boyardee Scarios. I’d give 'em a scario. I’d like to run into their bedroom on Christmas morning and say "Jimmy, Kimmy wake up! Spider man is dead!...Yes, they finally got en. Yes he’s lyin out now in some cheap second rate funeral home just like you will be some day; your little white bodies laid out in little white coffins and the flesh that was once your face will slither off your skulls and be eaten by worms!
Then they’d take notice of their grandfather.
But of course I never say nothing. Not in “Sin. John’s”.
Trusting that you and Madonna are well,
I remain, your friend
Valentine
PS: They also got two dogs, poodles-Tiffy and Tuffy. ….Oh and I presume everyone out home knows that Margaret is expecting.
Her third.
Oh my.
