Lost and Found - The Art of Writing Letters
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
My husband works for a brewery in Nottingham and making the 3 hour round trip from our home in the Lincolnshire Wolds can be exhausting at times. Sometimes he spends the night near work instead, and with evenings spent in a variety of their pubs he has met a diverse set of people, and made many good friends along the way. One such friend is a thespian in his seventies, who can drink you under the table and still be up at 7am to cook breakfast like it never happened. When he began to isolate all those months ago he decided to start writing letters to all the friends and family he could not see and speak to, and we have received such a missive every few weeks since.
Always, the letter is attached to a card or postcard featuring a beautiful image or illustration he thinks we will like, and it is filled with talk of his garden or how he spends his days, all written in his delightfully conversational tone. This connection to the outside world that does not involve technology has been a wonderful contribution to our (and his, I’m sure) sanity as the weeks turn into months and we forget what the freedom we once took for granted felt like.
Letters were once the only way to contact those you were separated from, and even though we can now do so at the click of a button, there is something different to be found in a letter than in a call or a text. The words are more considered, and a story unfolds rather than a back and forth. The writer reveals more of themselves, and despite it only being ink on a page, we feel MORE connected, not less.
Lockdown is easing, and our friend tells us in his latest note that he is looking forward to seeing friends at the pub again soon. Normality may even return to some extent, but the comfort these letters have brought us all will not be forgotten so soon.