Hello SFØ. Just a quick note to say that I'm back. It's summer, exams are over and I have free time. I'm restarting my SFØ drive with quite a simple praxis today, but I have greater things in production. Now, on with the task in hand...

I am very much a tennis person. It's one of only a few sports I can find interesting for more than about three minutes. When I was starting to become interested in the sport and playing it myself, our national tennis star was Tim Henman. In fact he was a local star, as I was living in Oxfordshire, his home county, at the time.
Tim Henman never won a grand slam. He never even got to a final. This didn't matter though, because he was British. The British never expect to win. We love the underdogs. However, he became the subject of jokes and mockery. This is unfair, I think. OK, so he was never the best in the world, but he did reach number 4. He got to six semi finals in grand slam events. He was just unlucky to be around during the reigns of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. I wanted to send him a letter to tell him that he was actually a good player.

So as not to bore people who don't follow tennis, I'll stop there. The main point is, I like Tim Henman. He shall be my celebrity. I will send him a letter.
Of course, Tim Henman isn't actually listed in the phone book. I had to find a suitable replacement. Using BT's online UK phone book, I set out in search of the T. Henmans of Britain. Searching county by county, because it won't let you just search all on England in one go, I found four of them listed. So I had a choice of:

T.B. Henman of Chesterfield
T.J. Henman of Eastbourne
T.R.J. Henman of Bedford
T.J. Henman of Keswick


Tim Henman's middle initial is H, which doesn't help to pick a candidate from the list, so I ignored the middle initials. Of the four, I chose T.J. Henman of Eastbourne. There is a tennis connection here, as Eastbourne is the location for the women's pre-Wimbledon tournement. I should point out here that while Westbourne, Southbourne and Northbourne are all areas of Bournemouth, Eastbourne is a completely separate town over 100 miles along the coast.

I love sending mail art now, and this gave me a perfect opportunity to do another 'player portrait'-style drawing. I found a suitable picture of Tim Henman to work from.



I then wrote a short letter inside:


So now some random person named T. Henman in Eastbourne is going to be told they are the best British male tennis player since Fred Perry. T. Henman could even be a woman, because the phone book doesn't specify.
I put an email address on the back for any response they may wish to send me, and if I do get one I'll post it down in the comments.