When did you last handwrite a letter?
My first computer, an Amstrad, came with us when we moved to Christchurch in 1986. I used the word processor to keep an ongoing diary, and I would cut and paste this into letters, which I printed out and posted to friends and relatives left behind. Their reciprocal letters were precious and I have some still, stored in a shoebox in a high cupboard.
I loved being able to write something, then edit it, and thought I’d never want to write longhand again.
By the time a daughter moved overseas in 1998, we had e-mail – so much better than waiting for snail mail. I printed out the messages e-mailed from Singapore, India, and eventually London, and filed them – until the file was full.
Last month a real letter arrived for me. The daughter knew I’d been offline for a week, and she decided to write me a ‘proper’ letter. She’d been thinking about the ephemerality of online messages, lamenting the fact that there’d be no shoeboxes in attics filled with treasured papers for a new generation to discover. Of course I sent a handwritten reply. Oh, the pleasure of putting pen to paper, of carefully forming the cursive script.
Handwritten letters take longer to compose. They show love and caring – time spent thinking of the recipient. The difference between an e-mail and a handwritten letter is like that between reading an e-book and holding the pages in your hand.
Sending letters means paying for postage, a cost that increases regularly. Perhaps I could think of that as a charitable donation, helping to keep post people in employment. Life seems to have gone full circle, and I’m off to write another letter.
“My pen and paper are the best
for sending missives, I suggest.”
My mother has given me a box of every letter I ever wrote to them – from boarding school, and for many years when we lived in different countries and I had four young children… many memories to relive.
When I want to send my children a special message I write them a real letter, with a fountain pen, on good paper! and when I found my birth mother, she got a real letter too.
Sometimes nothing else will do 🙂
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Fi, what a wonderful treasure to have your own letters to re-read! I haven’t (yet) gone back to a fountain pen, but i do enjoy a good roller ball pen.
Congratulations on your blog anniversary! I can’t leave comments there now, because blogspot insists on a g-mail address which I don’t use.
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Ruth, I couldn’t agree more. Today I hand wrote a card to a friend in England. She sent me one, and it was such a thrill to receive a real letter in the post that I wanted to reply in the same way.
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A proper letter is a real treat these days. Perhaps there’ll be more of us writing them now.
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snail mail, love letters but think about it we dont get them very often do we.. we are lazy typing all the time, and then try and write! I shall send some postcards from England to Carterton in a few weeks, as dont want any computer for 5 weeks, want to see my home country.. and around old haunts in Kent. Sussex. Surrey and London.. Will be my last trip home as I call it.. I am making a list of where I want to go and what to see. one is an old school friend we last saw each other in 1958 when I left school.
Hey who remember the dipper pen and inkwell on your school desks! no biro’s back then, or fountain pens, and I am not that old… 71!
I did receive a letter yesterday what a surprise when I realised who it was from.. a friend over near Feilding with newsletters from the Coach House Museum there..
What worries me these days with text, their spelling will be affected in later years..
Handy having a gmail, as when xtra play up, I can get access through gmail! Does not cost a cent. and its handy!
I am going to Westminster Abbey to view the lovely stained glass window in person for Sir George Williams, I have the photograph, thanks to Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, but wish to see it in the flesh, he was the FOUNDER of YMCA. then St Pauls Cathedral… just two places I am going to see again..
Trouble once I start typing, no stopping me…
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Adele, I hope you have a wonderful time at ‘home’. Old friends and memories are very special. I can remember dip pens at primary school, and I’m not as old as you. We also had holes for inkwells on our desks, and I can remember the china inkwells, but I think I actually used bottled ink.
It’s true that once we start typing it’s easy to continue. Somehow the thoughts flow straight to the keyboard.
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Hand written letters are lovely. And like Fi, my mother kept all my letters and they sit in the attic in folders and boxes. I am hoping the MacMillan Brown will agree to archive them one day; not that they are great pieces of writing but because they cover such a long continuous period.
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I’m a little envious of those who have stores of old letters. I have a few from my father written when I was a pre-schooler, but both my mother and I shifted islands at different times and ruthlessly (!) discarded such clutter.
If your letters are linked to Christchurch then I’m confident MacMillan Brown would be interested – or they’d know another archive that would take them.
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About 8 years worth are directly linked to Christchurch, and 3 of those years whilst I was at Canterbury University. I had a brief chat a few months ago and they expressed some interest. They would be rushing with eagerness if I were famous. 😀 😀
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[…] « Leisurely Luxurious Letters […]
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Such an interesting post and thoughtful comments that follow. How wonderful that your daughter wrote you a ‘proper’ letter – something to cherish.
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It’s definitely one to add to the overflowing shoebox,
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