Socks for Stephen

Dearest mister Fry,

We will meet today. In Den Haag (a town you call Den Haag, I’m sure, with a long and deep ggg. You are not going to say The Hague, or anything easy like that). You are gonna talk, and I will listen. With the utmost please. Then you will sign your book and I will talk to you. If I dare. If I did not dare, please read on.

Intermezzo:
Okay, so by now you know that English is not my native tongue, nor are my ten fingers (I type blindly) from birth familiar with your first language. I know you bother, you should. One excuse will suffice, I decide here and now. Every mistake is involuntarily, any lack of improvement laziness.
End of intermezzo.

I adore you.
In a non-stalking way, from a distance, I hasten to say.
From my early twenties I enjoy your work. I love it all. I saw you, and I read you. I became an omnivore. Whether you read the books by J.K. Rowling, slap Cpt. Darling, present QI, teach me how to be a poet: you’re my bread and butter. (Blablabla, enormous praise, utterly embarrassing for the both of us, you’ve heard it a thousand times, may be even believed it once or twice … etcetera ad infinitum.)
I even like you better than Hugh Laurie.
(Stop. No more.)

Through you I became acquainted with the works of Oscar Wilde. Through you I kept my sons at ease during long car travelling in Norway. Through you I feel all right being a snob every now and then.

I was in London last March, for fun. I’m sorry we didn’t meet on the streets or in a cab. I read the Fry Chronicles. May I ask about the title, pray? (Re-reading Sense & Sensibility at the moment, hence the pray.) I would have placed a bet on ‘Over Edom I will cast out my shoe’ being the title. Anyway. I think it was the thought of shoes, and the picture of you on the front, that made me decide to knit you a pair of socks.
Tonight I will present you your book, presuming you will sign your book today, and are willing to sign a copy of the not-translation. In this book I will hide the socks (insofar one can hide a size 12 pair of socks in a book). You will grab hold of the book, see the socks, look up to me and say:
”You made me a free Elf.”
Please don’t you mind me asking for your hand in marriage, right there and right then.

Let’s assume for a moment that you are embarrassed by me, by the words I stutter, by the gift, by the gift being socks. Please don’t show it. Please pretty please play the role of the grateful, slightly surprised Stephen. My oh my, who would have thought I was ever to get a pair of socks. That will do. Or something of the kind.

Untill tonight.

Ina
(Christina without the Christ-part. That will be my joke tonight. I once met an American who laughed at it. She signed a knitting book.)

P.S.
Tell me something I don’t know, Peter!
My geography teacher’s middle name was Louis.
If for anything, let me thank you for those two lines.
Thank you.