By: Blonde Two
Dear Madam
May I start this letter by showing my appreciation of your wide open spaces, your wildlife and your history. You are a truly magnificent National Park and we consider ourselves most fortunate to have access to your tors and rivers.
However, I feel that I must point out that in recent years, your organisational skills appear to have been slipping. I feel sure that the Army would have emailed you at some key point last year and mentioned that 2,000 young people were planning to expedition across your lofty hills and muddied vales leaving their assembled adults to languish at Okehampton Camp. I am also sure, that, being the Army, they would have but in an order for exactly the type of weather required for this event.
I am presuming that, for two years running now, your chaps at Organisation Tor have either lost the memo or put the wrong date into your moor calendar. As the requested sunshine has arrived either side of a Ten Tors weekend which has experienced, quite frankly, appalling weather conditions.
This has been a major inconvenience to us Blondes as we have had to dry an enormous collection of wet tents and are still mopping mud off our other equipment. Please could you ensure next year that you check your dates and ensure better weather performance.
I attach the list of further Blonde expedition dates for 2014. I am sure that Blonde One (who offers lessons in organisation should you require them) has already sent these to you. Please could you ensure sunshine, a light breeze and warm nights for all of these expeditions.
Many thanks
The Two Blondes
PS Thank you for the bluebells, I understand they are spectacular this year.
Dear Blonde Two,
Thank-you for your letter of the 18th inst. It has given us the opportunity to use the term ‘inst’, which conforms so well with our royal ‘we’.
While we are glad you enjoy our moorland so much, you must appreciate that with some millions of requests for dry weather being received at Head Office each year it has become impossible to accede to even a small percentage and we have therefore taken a decision – and we are unanimous in this – that we will leave the entire thing in the capable hands of the Met. Office, whose computers are more able to deal with such vast correspondence. You will, we are sure, have heard of the cutbacks we have suffered financially which have resulted in inferior computer equipment being supplied on tor.
We would like to point out that if we were to respond to every request for dry weather our beautiful bogs and marshes would soon become deserts and our breezes would be full of sand.
While your kind offer of lessons in organisation was, we are sure, made with the very best of intentions, we feel that you should realise that we are in fact hugely organised, since we support thousands of species in our vastly intricate eco-systems. We also feel that you should be grateful to us for the organisational practice we have made available to you, not least in the matter of rotation of wet tents in small spaces, abluting of various muddy items and the strategic supply of essential equipment at exactly the right moment.
We hope you will continue to enjoy our superb facilities, including our water and mud, grass, rocks, tors and bluebells, for many years to come.
Long may our rain sustain us.
Yours faithfully
Dartmoor.
Dear Dartmoor
Madam, a fair point well made. Long may it rain over us!!!
The Two Blondes