Written after the style of Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice.”
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Some say they like Darling
Some say Sir
Our Dear Sir is rather charming
And he loves his precious Darling
It is hoped that you will concur
You can’t have one without the other
To be a romance connoisseur
You’ll discover
Love grandeur
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By Darling ©2014 TSL
My Dear Expert Sir,
We spoke on the phone today, and you got on your soap box for a few moments. You were relentless in making sure I was doing things I needed to do i.e. healthy diet, exercise, get enough sleep, etc.
Now before you scoff, your questioning was very endearing and showed me that you truly cared. Now me being me, I made a smart ass comeback about you being a Sir-ologist in the art of Sir-ology. You laughed and remarked that you liked that title and subject area. You are a connoisseur in all things Sir-ness.
Now my Sir, if truth be known I am quite a proficient when it comes to the knowledge of you. I know you quite well love, and perhaps even a little bit better than you know yourself. So welcome to Darling-ville. Put your feet up, relax, and stay a while. I shall make you that cup of tea I do so well.
I love you very much.
Adoringly yours,
Dr. Darling
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Dear Agnes (We both know its not your name but if you insist on me writing this type of letter I could not think of a better bon mot)
I am somewhat surprised that you chose to mention your frustratingly obvious failings when it comes to looking after your own well being. It vexes me to no end when I hear you put yourself last and the repeated times it has happened. I will willingly ascend the soapbox yet again, and do so now to ensure you pay heed to my concerns and start looking after yourself.
We now know, after extensive testing of your allergies, the adverse impact some of the products you consume have had on your life. We now know that you need to transition these things out of your life as it’s the best possible treatment for your condition. But what do you do? Let me ask again. WHAT DO YOU DO? You tell me that you are too busy to deal with it right now and that you will put other life events before your own. Yet again.
Let me say here in a manner that brokers no confusion. I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT. If you think I am not a man of action I dare you to test me on this. My passport is ready and my wallet is willing. If you won’t allow me to look after you from here (you know I have told you to send me the literature I will read it and have shipped to you the things you need to start using). Then I will jump on a plane and do it in person. I even urge you to call my bluff because as you know my love I just don’t blink.
That being said I am more than happy to settle in Darlingville. I would love to try its tea shrine and sample its wares. As for putting up my feet and relaxing, well that will happen when you start looking after yourself instead of just talking about it.
Allergically Yours
Professor Sir With Love
©2014 Darling and Sir
My Dear Sir,
A friend of yours recently asked you if our ardor has waned due to our busy schedules. You informed me that you assured him that this wasn’t the case. I had to laugh. If nearly 15 years hasn’t diminished our love and affection for each other than busy works days aren’t even an issue.
I’ve told you once, and I will tell you again. I plan on being in your life forever. The only way I will cease to be a part of it is if you tell me to go away. That would break my heart, but I would honor your wish.
I love you Sir. I find my life to be better with you in it. I feel more complete.
Love forever,
Darling
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My Darling
I had hidden you away from not only the world but from the bright and shiny places in my mind. Never again.
You are front and centre in my life. Get used to it. It’s where you’re going to stay!
Busy schedule be damned. We will prevail.
And you can forget this talking about me telling you to go away. It’s not going to happen.
You found me again my Darling. You will not be rid of me so easily.
Clingingly Yours
From Sir With Love
©2014 Darling and Sir
Dear Darling and Sir,
First of all, I hope you are both well. I want you to know that I enjoy reading your letters and am feeling quite privileged to be a part of your relationship. Thank you for sharing.
But I do have one question. When will you two get together permanently? It troubles my imaginative mind that your romantic relationship, with all the normal ups and downs that all couples go through, is separated by such a vast distance geographically.
This is not good. I realize the logistics can be challenging. Who will give up family and culture and jobs to make the big plunge? It troubles me. Have I become too involved? I am for you both. I am for the Darling and Sir to become a family in every sense of the word (Sirling or Darsir). Is it too soon to answer this for me? Must I wait for all the letters to be posted?
I have now asked five questions.I wait with anticipation to know the outcome of The Sir Letters.
Patiently (sort of) yours,
Cate B
(Lets have Another Piece of Pie)
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Dear Cate
Before I even begin to answer your question I must first say thank you for taking the plunge and joining us in this little diversion for The Sir Letters. It’s truly great that some of our regular commenters are now becoming guest correspondents.
That is the big question that you ask Cate. When will Darling and I get together permanently? Life has gotten in the way, and we don’t know at this point.
But let’s speculate and assume that it were to happen. In terms of who would give up what? Well I would. At the risk of making this story any sadder than it needs to be, I have no parents, no siblings, no spouse and no children. The only commitments I have are friends and a job, breaking those ties would be relatively easy.
You most certainly have not become too involved. You are an active part of our little community and you are not the first to ask such a question, similar references are scattered throughout our comments. I am fatalist while Darling is an optimist. I believe I already know the answer though, if truth be told, our story quite literally is still unfolding. This story will come to an end, certainly the blog part of it. Our final letter may still be quite unsatisfying though, because we may not have an answer (either way) but the story of our love will be told and all that may be left is an empty hole, with our lost time together our testimony.
As for giving the two us one name (Brangelina anyone?) I am somewhat horrified and quietly flattered all in the same breath. I fear your anticipation may remain however, but thank you Cate for taking the time to write.
With Warmest Regards
Sir
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Hi Cate,
I agree with Sir in that you asked the difficult question.
Sir is correct in saying that I am an optimist. I do not believe that we found each other again by chance. I trust that most everything happens in life for a reason, but I don’t have answers yet.
I wasn’t even fully aware of what my feelings for Sir were when I first contacted him. I knew I cared. I knew I hurt. I knew that my genuine concern for his welfare overpowered my hurt. I know that he has dealt with the knowledge and feelings better than I have. Although I don’t voice it as often as I used to (to Sir), but this whole thing is still a head trip for me. I truly never thought I’d ever have contact with him again.
I’ll be honest here Cate, I deleted some of Sir’s response to you, because reading it physically hurt me.
And while I find Sir’s gallantry endearing in saying he’ll give up his world to come to me, that would most certainly not be set in stone. I prefer to think we’d be a dual-country couple.
What I can say with assuredness is that I love Sir, and my life is richer and fuller with him in it. I see Sir the way I have always seen him, and he is just beginning to understand that.
A big heartfelt thanks to you Cate for being our first correspondence. It is an honor to know you.
My best,
Darling
My Dearest Amusing Sir,
I still remember your first joke to me. Well I thought it was a pick-up line, but we’ll call it a joke here.
Sir: You look like you have a little Aussie in you.
Darling: Umm no.
Sir: Well do you want some?
Then you laughed hysterically while I heard in my head “Ba-da-bing.”
Shockingly yours,
Darling
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My Bemused Darling
I cringe to see those words on the page, they appear so coarse. I can’t however deny them as the first time I visited your country (and long before I knew you) I used them to great affect.
I do have a penchant for shocking, I take a sly pleasure in moving people out of their comfort zone and watching them react.
I like to hide any pretense of refinement and learning and see what level of bigotry and poor behaviour is on offer.
I am sure I just said it to shock you.
My work here is done.
You Will Always be My Darling
From Sir With Love
©2014 Darling and Sir
To Hear Sir Read This Post Please Click The Greeting
I have mentioned before and we have discussed at length your encounters with our native fauna. You have fed wallabies, frightened innocent little blue tongue lizards, and been petrified of spiders. Wait a minute. Did I just say petrified? Because the next animal of which I speak was exactly that.
We stayed at a little Bed & Breakfast in the Hunter Valley called “Hilltop Lodge.” I was recently nearby and saw signs entreating me to stay, so I can only assume it still operates. It was a nice home with a nice view. We checked in late in the afternoon, and when we had our room to ourselves you retired to the en suite. Upon entering our bathroom you shrieked and came running out. My immediate fear was that a snake had come up through the plumbing, something that occasionally happens here.
You were virtually speechless. I’m not sure I had seen you like this before. Eventually you alerted me to the beast within, and I steeled myself for the encounter to come. I entered with a little fear and trepidation to find a dead, dehydrated, petrified, it-ain’t-ever-going-to-breathe-again frog. I was about to deal with it, when you pulled me away. Your face was filled with worry and concern. I summoned the owners and they apologetically removed the offending carcass.
As a fitting coda you were attacked yet again. The sun had been down for many hours, and we were heading out to dine. We made for the car, but before we could embark a very much alive frog leapt out in front of you. He had back up. His mate was watching nearby. You shrieked and clung to me for protection. I laughed as sympathetically as I could manage. They were only seeking the sanctuary of the nearby pond my love. I don’t remember where we dined, but I remember your angst at having to cross the threshold that was the frogosphere before we could sleep. Suffice it to say we made it across safely and lived to tell another tale.
I will save you my Darling
Amphibiously Yours
From Sir With Love
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To Hear Darling Read This Post Please Click The Greeting
I went in to take a shower, and all I saw was some dark thing in the bathroom with me. I didn’t stick around to see what it was. Your smirk is etched in my memory. I added heaps of amusement for you during our adventures. I was happy to oblige. I do feel awful how terrible the owners felt though.
If I hadn’t been with you nearly every waking hour, I would have suspected you of planting that dead frog just for the chance to be my hero again. You had already reached hero status with me, love.
I had forgotten about the live froggy assault outside. I’m beginning to wonder if there was some sort of cold-blooded, vertebrate conspiracy going on, and they were out for justice for their fallen comrade. The frog certainly died in the most unromantic way, and those neon-green buggers knew it. They blamed me. They knew I had dined on frog legs in the past – numerous times. They were figuring out a way to creep into our room at night, to pounce on my face, and stuff their webbed hands up my nose.
I knew it would be dark when we returned to the Bed & Breakfast, and the frog brigade would be lying in wait for me. You would have just laughed yourself to death, and where would that have left me? With a lifeless Australian and a lane full of dead amphibians after I beat them all senseless protecting myself because my “hero” died in the throes of a laughing spree. That just wouldn’t have been ideal.
I laughed when I saw the pictures of the Bed & Breakfast and the room we stayed in. I had forgotten how the towels on the foot of the bed looked like giant nipple pasties. The room has changed very little from the link you supplied; I guess we stayed in the Deluxe Room.
The owners were sweet, and they fixed us an awesome breakfast the next morning, so deceased animal carcasses and burlesque bed lingerie just added an element of excitement to the otherwise quaint atmosphere.
And if memory serves, you asked me to assume the frog position a time or two for a game of leap frog. Yeah that’s right – leap frog. Ribbit.
Croakingly yours,
Darling
©2014 Darling and Sir
My Dear Sir,
For our 100th letter, I want to share another song that you play. I love knowing that you’re playing it. I love that it’s your beautiful hands working their magic over the keys.
Thank you for sharing yourself with me. I know you. I see you. I love you.
Love always,
Darling
Sir Playing Elton John’s Candle In The Wind
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Hello My Darling
I love that you love me. I also love that you love that I play the piano.
Happy 100th. This was all your idea and so the credit must go to you.
I love you my precious Darling
From Sir With Love
My Sweet Romantic Sir,
I love them. Thank you so much. You know my style; you know me.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Sir. I love you.
Always yours,
Darling
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My Dear Darling
I very much love you and the pleasure is all mine.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you too.
Thinking of you from 12,000 kilometres away.
You Will Always Be My Darling
From Sir With Love
©2014 Darling and Sir
My Dear Abundant Sir,
I was somewhat in awe of your porcelain throne, my love, and not because you were the king of it. I was obsessed with wanting to know if the water in the toilet went down the drain counterclockwise (opposite from America). You thought it was a riot.
I was shocked to see how little water was in the bowl of your very cavernous toilet. I asked if there was something wrong with your flusher. You roared with laughter. You reassured me that there was nothing wrong with the sewer system in your home, and that I would find out when I needed to use the lavatory. I believe I pushed your body out the door insisting that I needed to use your powder room right then and there.
Whether or not I really needed to use the bathroom has since escaped my memory, but I remember flushing that toilet. All I know is the sound of a torrential downpour akin to a tropical typhoon filled my ears as buckets of water came out of nowhere and circled the inside of the toilet bowl. If I had been sitting down at the time, I have no doubt that the awesome suction power would have sucked me down that drain and deposited me in a billabong in Western Australia. A timid woman would have cowered in the corner while covering her ears with her hands. My stubbornness prevailed however, and I stared danger in its gaping eye.
I have no idea how many times I flushed your commode while watching the display of water supremacy. I think I finally stopped when your laughter, from the other room, broke through my reverie.
With as much power as your flushing system had, I had to wonder if an Australian bidet would be more comparable to an anal enema. It caused a paradigm shift in my life of which I have never seen the likes of before or since. I have just now, after nearly 15 years, gotten over my astonishment.
Flushingly yours,
Darling
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My Water Logged Darling
I know it must have been quite a shock for you having to deal with our antipodean plumbing. I had experienced American toilets first hand, so I knew you would be somewhat perplexed. Yes we do things a little difference down here. I know it is hard to believe, but the American way is not the only way.
We have reached a point in the letter where I really feel the need to inject some bathroom humour. Perhaps I could make some jokes along the lines that you were “flushed with success.” Maybe I could suggest that it is “commodiously yours.” I could also comment that its all “water down the drain.” Sadly I fear that I may be just “raging against the latrine.”
So our toilet system provided you endless amusement. It kind of reminds me of the old Bill Cosby routine where his little brother asks where all the water goes when you flush the toilet. To which Bill replies. “It goes all around the city………….would you like to see the city?” Then he has his brother standing in the toilet bowl covered in grease.
As for our bidets, well they are normally maintained by the fire brigade with the jets being powered by three inch pressure hoses.
Tidally Yours
From Sir With Love
©2014 Darling and Sir
My Gourmet Darling
Do you remember we held a dinner party in your honour at my home? The plan was for you to meet my friends. To that end you met Amanda, Glenda, Tim and Reon.
I can’t remember what I cooked but I know you said you’d make a salad. It was a foreign sounding salad. Let’s be honest, to my eyes it was a foreign looking salad. We scoured the supermarket for the correct ingredients. If my memory serves me correctly it required whipped cream! It needed marshmallows! And to top it all off it needed pasta! Not just any plain old spaghetti or fettuccine type pasta. No it needed pasta I had never heard of before in my life. To put it quite simply it required Acini Di Pepe pasta!
We traipsed around that shopping centre. We went to three different supermarkets, several delicatessens and of the aforementioned Acini Di Pepe pasta we found no evidence. I think we stopped for a hot chocolate and some coffee to calm our frazzled nerves. There to the left of my vision was a specialty Italian small goods store. It became our last beacon of hope to find this wondrous example of flour, egg and salty goodness.
The excitement was so great I think we told the waitress that we would be back for our beverages and we marched into the store demanding that all Acini Di Pepe pasta be handed over post haste. Upon purchasing the package we returned to our hot drinks where we could relax, safe in the knowledge that the pasta was in hand and dinner was saved.
The rest my love is your story to tell. I await your reply with both relish and trepidation.
Al Dente-ly Yours
From Sir With Love
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My Dear Savory Sir,
Oh yes, the dinner party – we will go into more detail on that at a later time, but I was looking forward to meeting your friends (well there was a major hiccup when some information came out about one, but I dealt with it). I wanted to help and do my part, so I offered to make a pasta salad.
The pasta salad I wanted to make is often called “Frog Eye Salad” in America. My family calls it “Reunion Salad,” because it’s regularly made in large quantities for family reunions. I rang my sister in the states to get the recipe for the salad (the salad recipes differ slightly, but the key components remain the same). I was raring to get started.
You reassured me that any ingredient I needed could be found at the grocery store. It turned out not to be the case. Some of the ingredients that we struggled to find astonished me. I needed lemon pudding. There was nary a one to be found. I settled for vanilla (even that was hard to find). I also needed sweet flaked coconut. We found an unsweetened kind, which had to suffice. The recipe called for cool whip, but Australia doesn’t have cool whip; you said we could make do with the kind from a can. We searched for mini marshmallows. You found giant pink and white ones that we cut up into smaller pieces. We couldn’t even find pineapple chunks; we ended up buying rings and chopped them up too. What you thought would be a quick and easy jaunt to the grocery store turned into quite the scavenger hunt. I watched your cringes become so steady you almost appeared to be riddled with seizures. We nearly gave up.
The star of the recipe was the Acini De Pepe pasta. One employee argued with us that we really meant polenta. I must have explained what the pasta was at least a half a dozen times. I think we were both shocked and relieved when we found the pasta at that Italian specialty store. It was like finding gold dust. Score!
We returned to your house to cook. We had to hurry to make my salad. We nearly didn’t finish in time before the guests arrived. I wasn’t even sure it would taste right with all the substituted ingredients. The salad was supposed to chill for a few hours, but that was obviously not going to happen at that point. We were just lucky to get it made.
You helped me prepare the salad mumbling under your breath that although it was called a ‘salad,’ it really was a hot mess pretending to be a salad. I just laughed. We made enough for an army due to my struggle of properly converting the American measurements to metric.
When dinner was over you presented my salad – which by now was stained a horrid medicine pink color from those damn marshmallows – and dished it up as a dessert. You argued that anything sweet had to be a dessert. I chose not to contradict you after trekking around all morning, and part of an afternoon, for the ingredients from hell. It would have been easier and far less frustrating had we flown to the States and back to find what I needed.
I remember watching your guests sniff the salad like a bouquet. They took miniscule spoonfuls and put them into their mouths. They rolled the salad around with their tongues trying to come to terms with the different textures. You explained to me that “Australians just don’t eat stuff like that.” I am sure you were trying to spare my feelings in case I was hurt. In all honestly, I was too amused to be hurt. I couldn’t believe that every one of them acted the same – like a bomb of all that was good in the world exploded into their mouths and they didn’t know how to handle it. I was thinking that everyone – including you my Sir – just needed to cowboy up and eat that confounded salad since you nearly choked me to death with a reverse loogie I mean a raw oyster.
Not one of them finished their dessert salad. It also did not escape my notice that even you, my dear Sir, didn’t eat my salad. You were the driver of that bandwagon and your friends were the passengers. It was hysterical to watch them all hem and haw over an innocent pasta salad. I think they may have anti bullying pasta meetings now. You should rally your troops and attend a few. It’s never too late, my love. I will support you.
In one fell swoop, an American woman took you all down like bowling pins. You preempted the catastrophe, however, and had a spare dessert of fruit and cheese at the ready. I ate my salad. In the long run, it would have been better if we had put my Frog Eye Salad into a 2 liter size Ziploc baggie and mailed it to Track Mamma, or to starving children in Africa; we could have fed a small village. At least it wouldn’t have gone to waste. I love you for trying.
Ever so sweetly yours,
Darling
©2014 Darling and Sir
The Sir Letters 