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530 words

Hey Reader,

Amidst the brown envelopes from HMRC, telling you that you’ve forgotten yet another tedious piece of official business, peeps an orange corner.

But not Junk Mail Orange; it’s an orange that beckons. There’s a pattern, and it looks like something from a previous age.

“Pull me out. Open me,” it whispers.

The envelope has got a real stamp on it. The stamp has a picture of a dinosaur. There’s a postmark, from Cornwall.

You think you know who this is from: a good friend who you don’t see often, but who knows you’re obsessed with dinosaurs and writing letters.

That’s how you communicate, mostly. You rarely WhatsApp each other. The friend doesn’t really do social media (healthy). So when you write, you know it’s going to be interesting. Maybe not momentous, but important. Worth setting it aside for a few minutes while you make a cup of tea to drink with it.

You read it. You laugh. You smile. You feel deliciously said because you’d like to see your friend more often but you just… don’t. Which is okay, because friendships have different shapes, and your friendship is letter-shaped and fits neatly into a colourful envelope.

You read it again. Then you go hunting for your letter-writing pen, the one your husband gave you for your first anniversary. You find some writing paper, and you sit down, and you write back. You have a story to tell, just for your friend, and it tumbles out of you almost faster than you can write it. You cross out a word that stumbled into the wrong place, and make a little smiley face next to it, because it’s okay. This isn’t a test, it’s a conversation, and conversations are messy.

You wonder how many other people write regular letters to their friends, and then one day in the gym, a little girl comes into the changing rooms and asks you if you can reach the top of the lockers. You can, if you stand on a bench, so you climb up and feel around and pull down a letter. The little girl’s face lights up as she tells you that she doesn’t get to see her friend in gymastics anymore, so they write to each other every week and hide the letters in the gym changing rooms. Like a spy dead drop.

And you think: there’s a whole secret world of letter-writing out there. We’re all so obsessed with the digital we forget about the analogue, but it’s still there. Still beloved.

You get out your letter to your friend again, when you get home, and tell her about the little girl in the gym. You sign it. You seal it. You address it. You choose a stamp with flying ducks on it and walk down to the end of the village and post it.

And you think: how delightful that people are still writing letters to each other and telling their stories and setting aside enough time to write something just for you.

That orange corner among the bills is a gift, and I hope you get a gift like that every now and then, too.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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