Letter

 

Dear A., it seems that after all these years of reporting about the present and covering multiple issues and pushing the envelope, yours ever until the next Dear A., our activities are deemed nigh redundant by the very Mercury who winged our every thought on its way over weeks and years, the postal service. It is true that letters take a week to arrive now, that once arrived the next day. I’m sure the postal service that has run down the delivery of letters so dramatically in recent times will find, when it completes its enquiry into this matter, that surprise surprise the postal service is seriously run down and delivery of letters has fallen dramatically. Something will have to be done! Predictably, this will not be a program to inspire people to write letters, thereby increasing revenue. It will mean further reduction of services and an increase in fluffy dolls and obstructive paraphernalia at post offices. Due to the massive increase in parcel delivery across the country, my first solution is from now on to send letters in parcels. Rapid connection is assured. Sending express post will be like sending a letter in the last century, with certainty of next day delivery. The illusion that letter-writing in general has decreased is, of course, just that, an illusion. Nowadays, we send letters by post, email, message, blog, and any old social media outlet. Which, transparently, is why sending letters by post has taken a fall. When we read fiction of one hundred years ago, the texts unaltered by a sensitivity reader, we learn that sending letters by the hour was the norm. Postmen (postpeople) and couriers would jet across town on the hour getting the vital words pronto to the vital person. Surely one of the values of interpersonal letter-writing has been, very precisely, that it is personal. We warm to the familiar handwriting, our correspondents’ classic turns of phrase, classic to them and no other, their news and views that will never be plundered by a hacker, or serve as details for identity theft. Their words are reread and replied to, recommended to the memory, dropped in a bottom drawer for future rereads. This, it seems to me, is not the way we treat emails and online messaging. I suppose some people spend the evening rereading old emails of personal value to them and no one else, I ‘m sure it happens every day. The fragility and transitoriness of such epistles methinks is more fleeting than paper and ink. Doubtless we ourselves will continue the habit of a lifetime, sending our letters in ever more elaborate express parcels to beat the dozy system, thrill to the familiar handwriting and wonder about the reality of personal life. But are children learning such habits, and if they are, how would we know, with only the screen in front of us to go by? Just some thoughts. What do you think? Hope you’re feeling better. Until next time I remain ever your most devoted scribbler &c. &c. With love, B.