Entry 4:

Alexander--

Oh, dear. The truth is that I don't know how to say good-bye at the end of e-mails. The old hands at the paper like to use the jaunty "Cheers," or the catch-all "All best," or even "Bestest," old wire-service standbys (I think), that sound kind of dorky to me, so I've taken to using x's as a way to get out of what seems like too intractable a problem to spend a lot of time grappling with. I don't necessarily think of them as kisses per se, though I guess that's what they are. And of course I'm very pleased if they address your sad, lonely, basemented plight on this rainy Valentine's Day.

I did notice the thing about the queen's underpants, although I can't bear the Sunday People. I have to say that I don't really understand the point of the Sunday People and how it is different (if it is different) from the Sunday Sport, when both of them cover people and, er, sports. Or maybe the Sunday Sport is the paper that closed down? Or was that the Sunday Business?

This really is too far down at the cage-lining end of the newspaper world for me, even if I am, as you point out, American and inexorably drawn against my very will to the crass, vulgar aspects of the British press. We can talk more about that tomorrow, when we raise the tone of our discourse by comparing and contrasting the Economist's and the Financial Times' coverage of the European single currency, and by reviewing the implications of the various Pinochet court decisions on the ever-changing world of international law.

Or we can discuss underpants some more.

xxx (and now I feel self-conscious--you'll make a Brit of me after all),
Sarah