LOST ARTS: THIS week I did something I haven’t done for years. And I honestly do think I mean years.
What might that be I hear you ask? Been bungee jumping? Played Donkey Kong? Used algebra? No, far less exciting, I wrote a letter.
An actual real letter. Not an email, not a text message, there was no facebook involved, no Microsoft messenger. No, I went to the shop, bought a stamp, went and bought a coffee, and wrote it by hand.
What prompted this step back to the communication dark ages? Well in all honestly it was simple - all I had for the person in question was an address. So I wrote to them...
I honestly cannot remember the last letter I wrote before this one. I reckon I was probably at university.
During the late ‘90s I lived in the US for a year at an American university. I used to write home regularly then. I had an email address out there, but the internet hadn’t quite hit blast off in the UK, and I’m not sure at that point in time my parents would have even known what email was?
While at university I guess I was just more practiced at the noble art of sitting down and writing. Exams, for instance, were pen and paper jobs.
Which brings me to the point. When I had finished I couldn’t believe how much my arm ached. 10 minutes writing, and I felt like I’d been lifting weights. How on earth did I manage to write for three hours in exams?
I’m probably just out of practice.
But it got me thinking. How much nicer is it to actually receive a letter through the post. Yes email’s cheaper - well virtually free it many cases - yes email’s quicker, but how nice is it to find a letter on the doorstep?
Email is killing communication.
When someone sat in the same building as me emails me rather than get up and walk three feet, or shout, or call, is that right?
Yet at the same time, sites such as Facebook are making me have more contact with some people than I would otherwise be having.
The ease and impersonal nature of sending someone a message means it doesn’t matter how well you actually know them, or whether you really like them. It’s just typing a few words and hitting few buttons.
Facebook removes the awkwardness of not having spoken to someone who you haven’t seen since school, removes the fear of not having anything to talk about as you’ve drifted so far apart... and offers you enough of an insight into that person’s current life for you to know whether you’d ever want to be friends again in the future.
So I’m in touch with people that I lost touch with many years ago.
But I think there’s got to be a balancing act somewhere. I can’t spend my whole life communicating by Facebook. After all, it’d mean I never spoke with my parents for a start.
(They do now have email....)
So here’s my February resolution. Write at least one letter a month. I’ll keep it for around one month no doubt, but I’ll give it a go.
And as an aside to my old maths teacher, just in case you’re reading, no, still haven’t used that algebra...
ROCK AND CHIPS: Sorry BBC, nice idea, complete failure. Only Fools and Horses was brilliantly funnily. Remove the humour, make it a little serious, and it just did not work.