By Nimue Brown

Good evening. It is my unfortunate task to try and prepare you a little for life on Hopeless, Maine. I must warn you that this is a terrible place, full of dreadful, horrible things. Many of which really are too terrible to describe. I will do my best to prepare you for the dire things that you may expect to encounter and while I shall try to speak circumspectly, the more delicate amongst you should be warned that you may struggle with what I have to say. Make sure that you have your smelling salts to hand, and if you need to unlace an excessively tight corset, please do so discreetly so as not to cause anyone else to swoon in an embarrassing manner.

Prepare yourself for the awfulness of collars and cuffs. There is so little sunlight here that laundry cannot be sunbleached, and greying occurs all too often. Further, there are very few good sources of starch, making it desperately difficult to keep collars in good, stiff positions. You may be tempted to use night potatoes in this regard, but I advise against this. Night potatoes are horrid things, with glowing eyes and writhing tentacles, but the worst of it is that if you do not prepare them in exactly the right way, they can stain your clothes! I’m sorry, there’s really no gentler way of putting this to people.

You are probably used to much higher standards than it is possible to maintain here on the island. You will struggle, for example, to find anything suitable for washing your hair with. There are of course eggs, but eggs are often in short supply and you may be forced to make the ghastly choice between shiny hair, and making a cake. Do not use glass heron eggs. They work perfectly well, but your chances of losing a digit, or a limb to the glass heron are high and this offsets any good to your appearance that the egg might have achieved.

While a decent amount of cutlery has been salvaged from shipwrecks over the years, the island suffers a terrible lack of spoons. There is an ongoing spoon crisis, and you would do well to keep your spoons with you at all times. This seems to be the only way to keep them safe from whatever appalling entities make it their business to steal them. And as I’m sure you can see, it is difficult to run a good kitchen without spoons. No one wants the shameful indignity of having to drink soup from a bowl. 

Fabric is also in short supply. You will need your mending skills and will be obliged to accept lower standards in fashion and neatness alike. Your stain removal skills will often be called upon. When preparing sea monsters, it is all too easy to get sprays of dark substances onto one’s clothing and they are notoriously hard to remove. Since coming here I have had to improve my techniques for dealing with scorch marks, and blood stains as well. Keeping things clean is an ongoing struggle and you may well lose sleep over it. I myself lost a great deal of sleep last week regarding the amount of tearing my clothing suffered and the difficulty of repairing my best dress. So let that be a warning to you.