I like receiving letters

When a hand-written letter falls upon my doorstep amid windowed bills and deep-crust pizza offers, something dances for me. Fingers tease the envelope open and I find a "handled" letter, words crafted through the pen. The creative process of hand-writing something is so different from the potentially multi-edited email. Someone’s thoughts, rather, have been held in their minds for longer and carefully pre-fashioned into something flowing and complete which spills onto the page in ink. I love letters like these. They are tactile, sculpted and personal.

I hand-write letters. I continue my long-standing love-affair with Basildon Bond paper. Champagne range. My black ink sucked up into my fountain pen, I bring to mind in a very immediate fashion what it is I want to say. It takes time. The flick of my pen perhaps captures my mood, like a dance. Sealing it, addressing it, stamping it, I then walk the letter to the post box along the street. Whilst hitting “send” on the computer is almost too convenient, the effort of actually posting makes me feel good. Queen Victoria's post box has been the launch-pad of generations of letters. And so too my words begin their papered journey towards my loved ones. They will take a while to get there, but that makes the sentiment so much more beautiful, as I know that they’ll unfold, relieved to have finally been given breath.

We should all write more letters. Have you seen your grandparent's love letters tied together with a ribbon? Can you imagine doing that with a batch of printed-off emails... Times New Roman, size 12 font?!