Letters

Letter writing was BIG in my family when we were kids. We wrote to penpals, to friends who had moved away, and we wrote thank you letters for presents. We wrote to magazines, we entered competitions by post and we wrote to our favourite celebrity fan clubs.

I mean, we weren’t The Waltons.

We weren’t always happy about it, especially the thank you letters. But we did it and I’m pleased and grateful to my mum that we did. For one thing, writing letters is an excellent way to practise writing in general. Simple things like sentence construction and making your writing interesting and easy to read are essential when composing a letter. And for another, it meant we received letters back. And what’s better than a letter addressed to you plopping onto the doormat? Not a lot back then, I can tell you. Except maybe Thursdays when The Beano came out and Saturday mornings when you got to choose a quarter of sweets from all those heavenly jars. Sigh.

Anyway, I digress. When was the last time you wrote a letter? Not a typed letter for work, an application form, or a birthday card. An actual, handwritten letter. I’m willing to bet it was a long, long time ago. Probably years in fact.

Sad isn’t it? Or maybe you don’t think so.

Perhaps we are in better contact with each other now we can text and email and not have to wait for the post. And of course there’s the environmental impact of using all that paper…

But there’s nothing like opening a little envelope hand-addressed to you. Not a long white envelope. Not a brown one with a window. A smooth, possibly coloured or decorated, small, envelope with a folded letter inside. A brief search threw up lots of beautiful writing sets on Etsy and other online shops, so I’m happy to report that there are still some letter writers out there. Queen Atossa will be delighted. 

Queen Atossa, as I am sure you know, is credited as writing the first ever letter in around 500 BC, although annoyingly there is no record of what it actually said. Incidentally, the Persian queen is also noted as suffering the first recorded case of inflammatory mastitis around the same time, so I suppose that first ever letter could possibly have said ‘Oh woe my boob is in agony, send help.’ 

The business of letter writing was originally the only way to communicate long distance. Rulers of ancient nations would send letters (then known as epistles) to each other via servants. Letters later became more common as a way to keep in touch with friends, colleagues, family and of course lovers. Before Queen Victoria introduced the first postage stamp (the Penny Black in 1840) it was the recipient who was charged with the cost of delivery.

So what do you think? Have I just tumbled down a wormhole of sentimentality? Is letter-writing best left in the past or should we hang on to it? Do we really get the same excitement from an unread email or a ping on the phone? I’m not sure. Personally, I’ll continue to write the occasional letter, and will definitely try to write more ‘just because’ letters too. I think they make people happy. And that can only be a good thing.

Let me know if you agree.

Ruth x

(Ps. I mean let me know if you agree on the letter thing. Not on the making people happy thing. If you don’t agree with that then I can only assume you’re a psychopath and frankly I’m not sure I want to enter into a whole penpal scenario with you in that case.)