Writing Letters

[NaokoSmith]

SamScribble was asking if we ever write letters - y'know the kind you post with a stamp. Yes, you do remember what stamps are! They are those things that some of us used to collect and stick into books. (I was very bad at this as I just liked the pictures, so I would swap good stamps for torn ones if they were pretty.)

Occasionally, I do write a letter. I don't do this very often as I find people are not used to receiving discursive thoughtfully penned accounts of Life and the Weather in Wales (wet) plus a few intimate details of my life (I'm wet). They are used to getting an email saying: "Yes, I have done that / Please will you do y and z for me (and make sure it hits Spot X )."

Here is the photographic record of a recent bout of letter writing I undertook, since in this Facebook age you need pictures or it never happened.

Step 1 - put away laptop, and get eighteenth century writing slope out from under my bureau. Fill my pen with a different coloured ink.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Write letter to my niece thanking her for the soap my sister bought for her to give me - on Florentine paper bought in Rome (yes, well, I want to go to Florence as well so I will get some Roman paper while I'm there).

 

[NaokoSmith]

Select some pictures I cut out of the FT Weekend How to Spend It magazine (I cut things out instead of spending on them ) for a letter to a friend.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Wait for the glue to dry sufficiently to write my letter to my friend without the ink smudging when I write on the back of the pasted pictures, telling him how wet I ... I mean the weather is.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Attempt to evict my pussy from the bureau where she snuggled up as soon as I opened the doors to take my writing slope out.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Set off on my trusty bicycle in the pouring rain, wrapped in my trusty Barbour and with my old college scarf firmly tucked round my neck. I have to deliver some late Christmas gifts, go to the fruit shop, pick up a light bulb, drop in at the garage to book them to come and sort out the car, go to the library and ... the Post Office.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Yes, I do still write (and receive) actual hand-penned missives; I will have to photograph a still-life of pens (fountain) and paper (deckle) for evidence.

Your photo reminded me of elementary school, Duchess, where, when we were first learning cursive writing (no ball-points allowed), the nuns taught us that only black (males) or blue-black (females) ink could be taken seriously; blue or (heavens forbid!) aqua were the domain of frivolous society ladies and not-quite masculine men.

(I'm not sure if any anthropologists have addressed the question of the sexual division of inks in culture and society, Naoko; know of any studies? Any funding agencies who might entertain supporting a study? Can we draw up our application in longhand? Black and blue-black ink, of course.)

 

[NaokoSmith]

Go to the library to print off a picture of myself looking tremendously pleased with the tea towel my sister bought for my nephew to give me - as with his special needs he can't read, so I will have to show him Thank You, not write it.

I am very wet by now so first I have to go to the library toilet - and dry off. Then I turn the computer on. The guy next to me tells me it's taking fifteen minutes today for the computers to come online. I jokingly say that at least that isn't time off your 55 minute window of computer time. He says: "No, it is, I'm afraid."

Admire finger nails while tapping them.

 

[NaokoSmith]

When I moved in here, there was a big Post Office just round the corner. They immediately closed it down and made it into two tiny counters based in the local Spar supermarket - just in time for us all to queue in there for hours at Christmas.

I cycle up to the shops, go to the butchers, and then to the Post Office counters in the Spar supermarket, where I buy a small book of 1st class stamps (no, it is not that much more than 2nd class, don't be so mean).

 

[NaokoSmith]

Taking great care to do so with the ink-written addresses facing downwards so they don't get rained on, I post the letters! Yayyy!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Ah! The lineaments of a fine-pointed epistolary novella, Duchess; good work! I suspect some hanky-panky will ensue with the fellow next to you while you wait your fifteen minutes...

 

[NaokoSmith]

Back home to the pussies now, who are far too sensible to go out and get wet. I am chilled to the bone, and have spent about £2 on printing things off and stamps, never mind several hours cycling about in the winter rain to get these things in a post box.

Honestly, I don't know what people see in email

 

[R. Richard]

Write letter to my niece thanking her for the soap my sister bought for her to give me - on Florentine paper bought in Rome (yes, well, I want to go to Florence as well so I will get some Roman paper while I'm there).

I hate to be picky, but it's Firenze, not Florence. Firenze is the capital of Tuscany.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Your photo reminded me of elementary school, Duchess, where, when we were first learning cursive writing (no ball-points allowed), the nuns taught us that only black (males) or blue-black (females) ink could be taken seriously; blue or (heavens forbid!) aqua were the domain of frivolous society ladies and not-quite masculine men.

Dahlink, I think I know what your nun teachers would have thought of me , but just think what they would say about the fact that I sometimes use green and even brown ink! (Golden brown - texture like sun )

 

[NaokoSmith]

I hate to be picky, but it's Firenze, not Florence. Firenze is the capital of Tuscany.

I know, but there isn't an adjective for Firenzian, so I took poetic license. I do apologise to all Florentines; I would normally treat all nutty chocolate biscuits with the greatest of nomenclaturing respect.

 

[FelicityJohns]

Absolutely adore your account. Thanks for bringing me a smile today

 

[NaokoSmith]

Absolutely adore your account. Thanks for bringing me a smile today

You are very welcome!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I hate to be picky, but it's Firenze, not Florence. Firenze is the capital of Tuscany.

As in Firenzetine paper? Will I have to rename one of my favourite styles of Italian cooking? I'm not sure I'd like Veal Firenzetine! If we're going to be picky, the capital of Tuscany is Florence; Firenze is the capital of Toscana.

By the way, should the Looney Toons rooster be renamed Foghorn J. Livorno?

Dahlink, I think I know what your nun teachers would have thought of me , but just think what they would say about the fact that I sometimes use green and even brown ink! (Golden brown - texture like sun )

"Incorrigibly perverse," they would have said, and they'd have been right. Oh so wonderfully right!

 

[oggbashan]

Any letter hand written by me would be incomprehensible to the recipient. I can just about manage to address the envelope before my handwriting becomes a scrawl.

I still send letters but word process them, usually in 14 point or larger because most of the people I write to need large type.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Any letter hand written by me would be incomprehensible to the recipient. I can just about manage to address the envelope before my handwriting becomes a scrawl.

I still send letters but word process them, usually in 14 point or larger because most of the people I write to need large type.

This is not a bad point, Og, but one very much conducive to a post-modern sense of literature; the reader can read a multiplicity of meanings into any of your illegible missives.

 

[karaline]

I can't even read my own handwriting, i'd never subject anyone else to it if I could possibly avoid it.

 

[oggbashan]

This is not a bad point, Og, but one very much conducive to a post-modern sense of literature; the reader can read a multiplicity of meanings into any of your illegible missives.

They can do that with my word-processed stories too - often meanings that I never intended.

 

[oggbashan]

I can't even read my own handwriting, i'd never subject anyone else to it if I could possibly avoid it.

The only people who could read my handwriting were my secretary and my wife.

My secretary preferred me to dictate to a recording device. It was easier for her to transcribe.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I can't even read my own handwriting, i'd never subject anyone else to it if I could possibly avoid it.

And I reserve my worst handwriting for the blackboard (well, Smartboard now, and it's white) so my students cannot possibly copy my notes. Instead they must listen to what I've said and attempt to understand it before they inscribe anything in their notebooks. (I may be a bit post modern in thought, but I'm very Medieval in teaching, and fully agree with the decision of the Masters of the Université de Paris in 1303 to ban dictation as a mode of education).

 

[Tio_Narratore]

The only people who could read my handwriting were my secretary and my wife.

My secretary preferred me to dictate to a recording device. It was easier for her to transcribe.

Long ago I gave up on using my departmental secretary; it was easier to type/keyboard things myself than to prepare them in a form legible enough for her to transcribe without significant errors.