Jammed up

It is strange how you never come to think of some things when you're younger. When I was small, I hated oatmeal porridge - it was the most dreadful thing a person could think of gulping down his or her throat! However, now that I'm older, I have come to realize something important (which my mother, for some strange reason, never told me): you cannot eat oatmeal porridge if it isn't accompanied with a very big spoonful of jam. Once I had discovered this delightful fact, oatmeal porridge has enlightened my evenings as a very quaint thing to eat. This event has finally persuaded me to believe that you certainly get wiser when you grow older.

It could be pointed out, though, that the fact that oatmeal is one of the cheapest thing to buy somewhat increases its delightfulness but I say that is utter nonsense. People who come up with something like that clearly have no idea how greatly a big spoonful of jam can enhance your culinary treats!

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I recently found a book with Lewis Carroll's letters to children and they turned out to be very nice to read. Of course there is no reason to assume otherwise since I quite like his books also. Moreover, the Finnish translation is espescially nice. A bad translation makes a book quite unreadable. In any case, since I found some of his letters online, I will post the opening letter of the book here.

Christ Church, Oxford,March 8, 1880.

My dear Ada,—

(Isn't that your short name? "Adelaide" is all very well, but you see when one's dreadfully busy one hasn't time to write such long words—particularly when it takes one half an hour to remember how to spell it—and even then one has to go and get a dictionary to see if one has spelt it right, and of course the dictionary is in another room, at the top of a high bookcase—where it has been for months and months, and has got all covered with dust—so one has to get a duster first of all, and nearly choke oneself in dusting it—and when one has made out at last which is dictionary and which is dust, even then there's the job of remembering which end of the alphabet "A" comes—for one feels pretty certain it isn't in the middle—then one has to go and wash one's hands before turning over the leaves—for they've got so thick with dust one hardly knows them by sight—and, as likely as not, the soap is lost, and the jug is empty, and there's no towel, and one has to spend hours and hours in finding things—and perhaps after all one has to go off to the shop to buy a new cake of soap—so, with all this bother, I hope you won't mind my writing it short and saying, "My dear Ada"). You said in your last letter you would like a likeness of me: so here it is, and I hope you will like it—I won't forget to call the next time but one I'm in Wallington.

Your very affectionate friend,

Lewis Carroll.

(the text was taken form here)