Like many people of my age I used to write a lot of letters.
Growing up it was the only way to communicate with anyone beyond phoning them up, which wasn't always possible was it, not like today.
My first letters I suppose were love letters written on Valentines Days in the late Sixties, scribbled notes to young belles I gave my heart to. Most of these were in Leyland where I stayed with my older Sister Barb and her hubby Terry. I still have Valentine's letters written to me from back then! I'm not sure why we just didn't send cards but we didn't!
Next, my letter writing went commercial, when I started ordering stuff by mail order. Please Sir/ Madam, can you send me Hunky Dory by David Bowie! Somewhere I have the ad I responded to in Sounds music newspaper which my older Brother Eugene bought.
Ellisdons in Liverpool was another favourite place to order stuff from. Dear Ellisdons, can you please rush me a Jivara Shrunken Head and a Restless Skeleton! Paul H. Compton got a lot of letters too when I became obsessed with King Fu and Asian fighting arts. I still have all the books I ordered in the early Seventies.
A few good models came my way as well, all ordered with a letter and a postal order. Samurai and orcs.
I remember a plastic petit typewriter I had and a proper metal one in my parent's home, which I messed around with too and typed a few missifs on, using Basildon Bond watermarked paper, which for some reason makes me think of the word vellum. My Mum and Dad had some personalised stationary too, which was all the rage back in the early Seventies.
True letter writing began when two things happened: I left my home town of Preston and I fell in love. both events occurred roughly at the same time and both required a lot of ink. Many people received letters from me during this period, friends, family members, pen pals and my girlfriend, who later became my wife! We must have written to each other every other day for a few years and being sad romantics we have each kept them all! Its a big stack I can tell you.
I also fired off a few communiques to people I admired like Al Pacino and Spike Milligan. Amazingly, I got a letter back from Spike!
From 1981 to about 1985 I also wrote to my Dad [My Mum had died in 1977]. I lived away and for some years abroad, so saw little of him during those years, just Christmas and when I visited.
We wrote to each other a lot and I can see now in my mind's eye his beautifully formed hand-writing swirling across his letters like waves. My Dad was a clever bloke. He loved reading, he loved words and knew lost arts like Shorthand, which he used to help the smooth running of his Cash 'n' Carry warehouse during the Sixties and Seventies.
Sadly the early Eighties proved to be my old Dad's final years, as he too passed away, all too young, in 1986.
After he died I found my letters too him. They were all in a bundle, neatly tied together with string inside his battered briefcase. I was very moved by this simplest of gestures and together with the letters he sent me, all saved, they formed an almost unbearably special memento between us.
Alas, I have not had the courage to read them again since back then but, one day, I promise to do it for the bond of writing we shared, our mutual passion for words and the love we had for each other expressed best in those letters.
Perhaps in six years when I'll be the same age as him when he passed away, 66.
Did you write letters readers?
