I have been spending a lot of time up in the attic lately, going through old journals and letters, finding snippets of memories caught in real time, in crinkled pages, on blue airmail paper, via postcards with exotic postmarks.
A couple of the letters were from an old friend from university, who was editor of the uni newspaper and has gone on to produce ‘Today’, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme. I used my very modern iphone to send him photos of the handwritten letters he sent to me when I was a student in Kyoto, Japan, aged 19, half a lifetime ago. It was a fascinating snapshot of student life – the things we cared about, the things we spent our time on, the people we fancied, the embarrassing and often hilarious capers we got up to. True to the career he would follow, he had sent detailed dispatches from Durham, letting me know the goings on of college life in full colour.
I remember when those student days, when I spent a year abroad in a very foreign land. The anticipation of coming home to my homestay family’s house after school, and looking on the bottom step of their winding wooden staircase to see if there was a letter for me from home. And often there was – I received and sent over 100 letters and postcards that year, in the days before email.
On seeing the photos of his old letters, my friend’s response was “I sound so young, and yet so familiar.” It’s true – his voice then was still his voice now, even though he is 20 years older and a whole lot wiser. And not only did the discovery of those letters bring a sweet memory of happy teenage times, it gave us a reason to reconnect. We are meeting up in London next month for the first time in a few years, and I can’t wait to catch up.
That’s the power of a handwritten letter. And I think I’m going to take it up again.
This week I challenge you to write a letter to someone you care about.
Have a lovely week
Beth
PS Just as I sat down to write this my old friend Rachel Hazell shared this lovely video which is enough to inspire anyone to write a letter now, not when it’s too late for them to read it:
