42. To whom
it may concern

Once when I was on holidays when I was little, I sent my grandmother a postcard that said DEAR GRANDMA, WE WENT SHOPPING AND I GOT COCOPOPS. This became a running joke in our family for many years, and when on holidays we would always send postcards telling each other nothing about the holiday except what we had for breakfast. Another part of the joke was to always choose the very worst postcard you could find. And an endless series of PSs and PPSs was pretty much compulsory.

I guess it’s no surprise then that one of my best-known stories has featured a thinly disguised version of my favourite breakfast cereal and an endless series of PSs (25 in fact).

 

ilove Choco-pops in fifty words or less because they are chocolaty, crunchy, cool, great, wonderful, amazing, exciting, lovely, yummy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Yours truly,
Andy Griffiths

P.S. That’s exactly fifty words, even counting the ‘Yours truly, Andy Griffiths’.

P.P.S. I could have given you many other reasons why I love Choco-pops, but I was only allowed fifty words.

P.P.P.S. If you’d let me have more words I would have told you about how I love Choco–pops so much that I once ate five bowls of them, one after the other. I would have eaten a sixth bowl, too, except that I felt a bit sick and then, guess what? I really WAS sick! All over the kitchen floor. A big brown puddle of Choco–pops. Mum and Dad were really mad. Sooty was happy, though, because he dived in and started to eat them. Which just goes to show how great Choco–pops are—even dogs love them! In fact, Sooty probably likes them even more than I do, because as much as I love them I wouldn’t eat Choco-pops that somebody else had already eaten and then thrown up. Not even if you paid me a million dollars.

P.P.P.P.S. Not even a trillion dollars.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Not even a million trillion dollars.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Well, MAYBE for a million trillion dollars. I’m not stupid, you know.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Please don’t tell anybody about me eating the five bowls of Choco-pops and throwing up, because it would be kind of embarrassing if that got around, plus I told Mum and Dad that I’d only eaten three bowls and they would be really mad if they found out it was five. They are always going on about how Choco-pops are not very healthy and how they are full of sugar and blah blah blah blah, but parents are always saying stuff like that.

 

Just Shocking!

In the story ‘Wish you weren’t here’ (from Just Annoying!), Andy borrows one of his neighbour’s garden gnomes to take on holiday with him so that he can photograph the gnome having a good time and then send his neighbour the photograph as if it were a postcard from the gnome.

 

Unfortunately, Andy’s scheme doesn’t go quite according to plan as he starts to imagine that the gnome is trying to kill him … but that’s another story.

 

You don’t only have to send postcards from real places. You can send them from imaginary places too!

 

Another form of correspondence that I’ve always enjoyed is writing letters in the form of comic strips.

Here’s an example of one I wrote from New Zealand.

 

TRY THIS

Comic-strip letter

Write a letter in the form of a comic strip to an imaginary pen pal in another country describing:

•  a typical day at school

•  a recent holiday

•  a school excursion

•  a school camp

•  a sporting event

…OR THIS

Imaginary postcard

Design a postcard for an imaginary destination. On the back of your picture write a short message to your family or best friend as if you were there (don’t forget to tell them what you had for breakfast!).