LETTERS, CARDS, PHOTOS & MEMORIES

I told a lie in a recent post! I said I didn't like opening mail. That's not strictly true (well 99% of the time it is!) but every now and again a piece of mail will land through the door and I have a complete urge to open it straight away. Its not the kind of post that is written by a computer; sent out by multi- national corporations; and when on opening deliver mundane news, that I like opening. It is post that is written by the human hand. Why do I like it? Because part of that person and their character is put down there in that writing, no matter how small it is.
When you move house, it's funny all the things you find, that you have long forgotten. Stuff that you had thought you had long thrown out, things you don't know where they came from, and an item that can bring back a faded memory. As I was unpacking my things at my new country abode, I came across a box in my belongings. I opened it up to find it full of letters, cards, and photos that I had collected over the years and had refused to give up. I found myself sat on my bedroom floor for hours, reading through endless correspondences and well wishes from the past.

There was a big pile of letters with the old red and blue stripe of airmail. They were from my Grandmother (or as I call her Lil). I remember always feeling so happy seeing those striped envelopes when the mail arrived. I had always grown up with Lil being there. Her and my grandfather only lived around the corner from me. I would see them nearly everyday. We would usually pop round after school and she would give us biscuits and sometimes dinner if my mother was not around. When I was 17 my Grandad died of cancer. My Grandad had spent most of his life serving aboard in the army, and we always said he never really left it. It was a terrible thing to see such a proud man waste away in front of your eyes, from this awful disease. He was only 67. Lil didn't want to stay in the house after my Grandad died. There were too many memories for her. As she had lived most of her life abroad too, being shipped around with my Grandad she went to live in Cyprus in a small village in the hills. The weather was better for her hands and her health and I knew it was the right decision for her. It didn't stop me missing her terribly though. I started to write to her and she would write back to me. I would love opening her letters and reading about her everyday life in Cyprus, but what I loved the most was her handwriting. It was so beautiful and lady like. I use to practice writing like her, as being a good drawer I find forgery quite easy, but it never felt natural and so therefore wrong. We wrote to each other like this for a couple of years, but the correspondence became less as I got wrapped up in my own life and moved away from home. I kept the letters. I see Lil about twice a year when she comes back to the UK. I carry a picture of her from when she was 17. It now resides on one side of my dressing table surrounded by perfume bottles which I think she would approve of. The glass of the picture got broken in the move and I mean to replace it. I think she looks so beautiful in it. She still is now, even at 80.

The box contains, not just letters, but postcards, scraps of paper messages and cards. I came across a birthday card. I don't usually keep many birthday cards but as I opened it up, I realised why I had kept this one. It read:
"Happy Birthday Carly. Love Haribo x."
Haribo was the nickname for Harriet. I kept this card because it is the only bit of writing I have left from her. Harriet was my friend from University. She died in a car crash just after she handed in her final major (exactly 10 years ago). She was 22. It is probably one of the saddest and most devasting things that has happened in my life. Me and Harriet were never best friends. In fact I didn't really like her that much when I first met her. I found her rude and abrupt, but in time I grew to like her and found her strong and no nonsense rather than rude. We grew quite close towards the end of her life as we both got a part time job together at WH Smith to help us through our uni lives. We would often walk to work together in our shapeless uniforms and after our shift we would go for a milkshake at the local cafe or go shopping, trying on clothes and shoes that we couldn't afford on our meger student loans. After she died I went and bought a picture frame and put one of the only decent pictures I have of her in it. We all sit smiling on the stairs apart from Harriet who sits at the bottom looking surly towards the camera. I have taken this picture everywhere with me since. It sits usually among other pictures and no one takes much notice of it and I never really talk about her, but nearly everyday I look at it so I remember her. It now sits on the other side of my dressing table. She wanted to be a producer. When her results came in, she had got a first. I think she would of made a good producer.

I carried on looking through my box. Love letters, joke cards from friends and old pen pals corrospondences. Some of it made me laugh. Some of it made me cry. It was a box of memories.
I like writing. It has been something that has come later to me in life, but now I feel like it is a good friend, a confidant. In life I don't always say things the way I want to. I get shy, I stutter, I say something stupid or things come out the wrong way. Though I'm no Shakespeare, with writing I get to say everything the way I want to say it, in my own time, without getting flustered, and that's why I love a letter. Maybe I need to start writing to Lil again, and then maybe I wouldn't hate opening the mail as much.