Writing Letters? Who does that these days?

The days of writing letters have passed, I feel. That's quite a bold statement. But let's have a quick think about it. Most, if not all of us, will send important information via email. We receive almost everything via email these days. Annoyingly, I still get a bank statement through the post and am still looking for a way to stop it; it just goes through the shredder and is recycled. I may be able to stop it on my banking app if I can get that working.

Let's face it: if we need to send someone a message, we are more likely to text, WhatsApp or Messenger. Those last two, of course, are owned by Meta. There are other ways to message that I'm unaware of. 

There are many collections of people's letters, and one of my Christmas presents was a book of letters written by my hero author, David Cornwall, also known as John Le Carré. It is interesting to see his life in letters and how his life has interacted with his writings.

Many other collections of letters by writers and others detail life in different times. In the future, will there be such collections to read about the current turbulent times that we live in?

When we cleared my parent's house, I found that my mother kept the letters and postcards I had sent during my time on HMY Britannia and throughout my other travels in the Royal Marines. My brother Andrew's 'blueys' that he had sent when he was deployed with his RAF Squadron during both Gulf Wars were all there, too.

Is it the same for service men and women these days? There is email and internet access these days, albeit restricted for security reasons. However, I would like to know if writing paper and envelopes are still available from the NAAFI shop.

Letter writing is a dying art in the 21st Century. I certainly can't remember when I last hand-wrote a letter. That is the sad reality of the digital world. I can think of areas in our social lives where we would be better off with pen and paper rather than cruel comments on digital media.

I might go away now and have to think about who I can send a letter to, and then there's the problem of negotiating the Post Office ( now that's another piece, indeed).  

 

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