NaBloPoMo - Day 9 - Letters

In times past we used to get two daily postal deliveries, nowadays I barely get one delivery. The art of writing a letter has gone, vanished, a casualty of the modern age of emails, blogs, texts, tweets and Face Book.

In my study I have a collection of letters written to me by my late Grandmother. I have also a collection of letters written by the wife of my deceased cousin. In those letters, she shared with me a host of things, snippets of her family and domestic life and asked questions about mine. I also have other letters which I have kept and treasure.

Do we though, keep emails in the same way? I print off any particular genealogical email that I want to keep, but the typed word feels completely different to that written by the pen. I don't know why, it just does, perhaps it is a psychological thought of handwritten letters being more personal?

I read somewhere a few months ago of a lad who was aged 16. He had never written a letter. You know the sort of letter that involves and envelope and stamp and a favourite pen. I remember being amazed at this. When I was a child my task on boxing day was to sit and hand write letters of thanks for my Christmas presents. I don't know if any of those letters survive the estates of my late relatives. So perhaps this lad simply tweets his thanks or maybe sends a text?

I have a favourite pen, well actually I have two. The first one is a silver Parker pen which has my initials and surname engraved on the side. This was a present from my Grandmother when I finished my professional training in the early 1990s. The second is my trusty fountain pen, a present from my Mum in the mid 1990s. I usually sit and use the fountain pen when I write my Christmas cards.