Author Archives: Jacssisters

Jim Perrin, ‘Guardian’ country diarist, writes an anonymous letter

Jim Perrin has written a particularly noxious ‘anonymous’ letter — one, at least, that we know of — and we have shown it in full transcript with a specimen of his handwriting here.

He was, throughout this letter, twisting facts and dates and trying to put into their landlord’s mind the idea that our late sister’s children were behaving not only anti-socially — with risk to his property — but illegally: doubtless to cause their eviction.

In this remote moorland where there are fewer than a dozen farms the ‘residents’ are mostly known to each other and our sister had lived there with her children for over fifteen years: some of these ‘residents’ were at the party we mention below.

The ‘track’ is on the high moors at the end of a tarmac road which leads only to three other farms before it becomes the length of unsurfaced rough track to the cul-de-sac where our sister’s house is situated. Continue reading →

An anonymous letter written by Jim Perrin

It was not long after our sister’s death.  She had died while still young and her children had to adjust to their lives without her constant and loving guidance.  Of course our family and all those who could help gave their full support, and it was during this period of deep mourning that one of Jac’s sons telephoned his ‘Welsh’ aunt.

Her nephew had just opened a letter, sent by their landlord, which he read to her over the ‘phone. In this letter details were given of a ‘letter of complaint’ which they had received and they ended by saying that ‘As explained, no action is to be taken — there has not been a complaint for fifteen years, so I doubt there will be more!’  (Do note the landlord’s emphasis…)

This troubling letter concerned Jac’s children: sent anonymously in July of that year, less than eight weeks after her death, the clear intention of the writer was to do them harm.  Containing vehemently expressed distortions of the truth as well as actual lies it was a work of the most distilled malice. Continue reading →

Our Response to a review by Jan Morris

We have read the review of ‘West’ which Jan Morris wrote for the current issue of IWA’s journal Agenda and when Sir Andrew Motion wrote his review of the book in The Guardian, 24/07/2010, we commented that ‘we relished the element of damning with faint praise.’ We feel Jan Morris’s review has similarities. There are several ideas which could be thought ‘tongue in cheek’ and we were intrigued.

Certain words and phrases she used struck us — written as they were of a book in which, as Sir Andrew Motion pointed out, our deceased sister is a main character:   ‘… fertile imagination’;  ‘a wife died’. (Actually, she was not his wife, as Sir Andrew picked up — only to be ‘corrected’ by ‘Melangell’ (JP?) on the comments thread lyingly stating that she was, and Jac planned to terminate the relationship had she lived.)

‘Given the imaginative genius of its author, though, and the somewhat elusive substance of his recollections…’;   ‘…that dreaded moment of diagnosis’;   ‘…and he himself was diagnosed with terminal cancer.’ (For the record, we have been told that Jim Perrin was obliged to admit that he does not have cancer. Ref. our post: ‘Was Jim Perrin in Ariège for the sake of his health?’) Continue reading →