Remembering letters

Back in the day, there was a fashion for pen friends. There was a sort of matchmaking service in one of the weekly magazines I had as a kid. I signed up when I was about 10 or so. My first pen friend was a girl in Ålesund, Norway.

In my teens I penned epistles to my exchange partner in France and to friends in Germany and Italy.

When I left the parental home and went to university, I ramped up my rate of letter writing. Then after I started working and living abroad, I ramped it up even more. I was regularly writing 4-5 letters a week to old friends, new friends, girlfriends and family. Each one 3-4 sides of A4.

I slowed down and stopped after I got married and had kids. Coincidentally that happened to be around the time that the Internet and email and messaging kicked in. In fact, over the last 30 years, I have hand written barely any letters and received similarly few. Mostly to/from my Uncle Dave (RIP this year).

This morning, I was remembering those letters and wondering what happened to that powerful impulse of mine to share thoughts and feelings in writing. And I realised - you guessed it - that I have done it online mostly. Previously on Ecademy (2004-2010, roughly) and since then on Facebook mostly.

It's tempting to think that writing letters was better than this. It was personal and tactile. It required patience to write the letter, post it and wait for a reply. Still, most if not all of those letters have disappeared, whereas I can retrieve much of what I have written online - although sadly not the reams I wrote on Ecademy. They disappeared with the platform.