** I just discovered this unpublished blog post. Almost a year on, it’s finally time for you to have a read…**
A few weeks ago I turned 40. As part of of my celebrations my two best friends, both of whom I have known for most of my life, put together a photo montage of my best – or indeed worst – moments. Slipped in alongside the sun faded and dog-eared images of bad haircuts and terrifying fashion faux pas were letters, lots and lots of handwritten letters.
It was strange to see these missives after so long. My handwriting was similar but much neater than the scrawl it resembles today. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of my letters again after it’s arrived at its destination so it was a slightly surreal experience. I gingerly opened the envelopes – one of them handmade from the pages of a magazine emblazoned with’ cut out and keep’ dress up dolls of golfing great Nick Faldo (don’t ask….) – and unfolded the watermarked Basildon Bond pages.
Mrs McCullough, my school English teacher, would have been proud – the letters were perfectly laid out with the address and date at the top righthand side. The words were formed in black ink, no doubt written in the fountain pen I got for my 18th birthday from my beloved Great Aunt, the one I still use today.
The words made me cringe. They were clearly the prose of an 18 year old, ‘I was supposed to go out tonight but the idea of a fag, cup of tea and a peanut butter sandwich in bed sounded like a better idea.’ ‘How’s Edinburgh? Hopefully you’re drinking loads and doing very little work!’ ‘Did I tell you about my excellent pull a few weeks ago?’ But they were most definitely written by me, recounting stories I cannot recall from another lifetime.
When I returned home a few days after my birthday I ventured into the attic and dug out my memory box – a treasure trove of letters, old birthday cards, notes on the back of cigarette packets and most bizarrely, an envelope full of an old boyfriend’s hair together with a homemade ransom note (again don’t ask…..). Perhaps it’s time I binned that.
I pulled out the bundles of letters and spent the next few hours pouring over every carefully written word, some in rainbow hues and with added illustrations (ML I”m looking at you….) Here was a potted history of at least six years of my life. These weren’t one liners dashed off in 30 seconds, these were pages of outpourings from my dearest friends. They talked of heartbreak, holidays, exams, drinking, smoking and boys, lots and lots of boys…..
There were many from one boy in particular – my first proper boyfriend who went on to become a very dear lifelong friend. He died suddenly almost four years ago and this was the first time first time since that I had read those letters. I can’t quite explain how special it is to me to have them. I am eternally grateful that we met in an analogue world. To hold those pages in my hand and see his handwriting, to see the loops and dots and lines of words formed just for me is something very special – even if his jokes were horribly bad….
Then I found the letters from my Aunty Madge – the gifter of the aforementioned fountain pen. My eyes filled with tears as I struggled to decipher the shakily written lines. Although I couldn’t make out specifics, I knew the words were filled with love and if I was lucky, the blue envelopes might just have contained a £10 or £20 note.
I know all my oldest friends handwriting but wouldn’t recognise words written by my digital era friends. We live in a world of Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook where communication is brief and instant and can be instantly lost, as I recently discovered when my phone met its sudden death via a packet of baby wipes.
Where digital missives are easily lost, letters remain; to be destroyed only by fire or angry hands. Without letters our grasp of social history would be much less rich. The heartbreaking ‘Letters of a Lost Generation’ written between Vera Brittain and four friends between 1913-1918 taught me so much more about the horrors of war than anything I ever learnt in the classroom.
So is letter writing a lost art? Do you still learn how to set out a letter at school? How to address it correctly? In what form to sign off? Somehow I doubt it. In today’s world of social media oversharing, have we lost the intimacy of a personal letter between just two people? Can a new follower, DM or like on Instagram ever rival the excitement of seeing a handwritten letter drop through your letterbox? For those born post 1997 I guess the answer is yes but to me, now a 40 year old, there is nothing quite like the thrill of ink stained Basildon Bond to make my heart sing.
Postcards From My Kitchen Table 