Put to writes

It may be easier to fire off an email or bash out a text, but writing an actual letter can bring its own rewards. These converts show how it can bring unexpected pleasures – whether writing to strangers, or people you think you know. It may even teach you something about yourself

For Terri-Jane Dow, making penpals has given her an abundance of recipe ideas, reading suggestions and connections with likeminded people all over the world. But it’s also helped her create new habits and carve out some valuable head space.

Last summer, when lives still felt on hold, I saw a tweet from The New Yorker journalist Rachel Syme about the vintage typewriter she’d just bought. To test it out, and to forge some sense of community in a very strange time, she offered to send typewritten letters to people in her wider network. A year later, Penpalooza.com has over 12,000 members all over the world, a monthly e-newsletter, a buzzy hashtag on Twitter and even merchandise available on Etsy. Using special software to match up aspiring penpals, Syme had to redesign its algorithms to accommodate the sheer volume of people signing up. Of those sign-ups, I was just one.

It’s no secret that I’m very online. I moved my book clubs to Zoom at the beginning of March last year, and they might never go back to real life; I have more social media logins than my Keychain can remember; I met most of my real-life friends online, and the majority of my closest friends live in different countries to me. I spend every day in front of my laptop, flinging tweets and WhatsApp messages out into the world at top speed. But, in a year where real-life connections have been few and far between, letter-writing has been cathartic.

It’s such a different experience to sit down and write longhand to a stranger. So far, I’ve resisted the urge to look my matches up on social media – I want them to stay in my brain, rather than appearing on my screen. Writing letters has been a welcome break from staring at a screen all day, and it’s much easier than I thought it would be at the start. I’ve a couple of people with whom I exchange long letters, one who sends me the best notecards with hotel stationery tucked inside, and a few postcard book reviews, a scheme that a Penpalooza alumni, Liz Maguire, set up at the beginning of this year. Buoyed by my sudden influx of post, I sent a card with my red wine chocolate cake recipe in it to a friend who moved back to New Zealand a couple of years ago. We chat online a lot, so I was genuinely surprised when a tiny gold card appeared a month or so later, with a summery recipe for apricot clafoutis.

Checking my mailbox became part of my lockdown ritual – 11am meant getting up from my desk, putting the kettle on, and running downstairs in my slippers before it boils. The serotonin boost when it contained a bright airmail-stickered envelope easily beat 100 Insta-likes. I love seeing the little round forever stamps from the US, or the blue stamps shouting PRIORITY! in various European languages.

My penpals have taught me some excellent habits, such as working with my laptop on airplane mode, so that I can write without checking my Twitter feed every four minutes. I’m looking forward to having actual things to tell my new long-distance friends, stories that happen outside of my living room, and maybe even writing to them from somewhere outside of my house. It’s exciting to imagine rifling through the postcards at an exhibition shop to find the right card to send to my friend in Chicago, or scribbling on a few sheets of hotel paper to send back to the friend who already seems to have an endless supply. In carving out time to sit down and write something, instead of dashing off a quick text, letter-writing has created a different space in my friendships. When we do return to ‘normal’, I’ll be bringing my penpals out into the world with me. Of the positive things to come out of lockdown, the sense of slowness is one that I’d like to hold on to.

I’m hoping that some of my new penpals feel the same.

Finding a bright airmailstickered envelope in the mailbox easily beats 100 Insta-likes

By encouraging her children to strike up a written correspondence with their grandparents, Katja Gaskell has discovered that letter writing can help deepen relationships and encourage new discoveries, even with those you think you already know well

Much like every family around the country, our time with grandparents has been limited this past year. During Lockdown 1.0, my children – aged 13, ten and six – enjoyed regular Zoom meets with my in-laws and held Houseparty sessions with my parents. During the shorter November lockdown, it was all about FaceTime and Sunday evenings were set aside to chat with family.

When we went into lockdown for a third time, however, online catch-ups became more of a chore than something to look forward to as there was little to talk about. But I was keen for the kids to keep in touch with their grandparents, which is why we turned to letters.

I remember vividly the thrill I used to get when I received a letter as a child. When I moved overseas with my family, I’d spend hours writing to friends (emails and mobile phones not having been invented yet), and they’d write long missives back. It was only during our time cooped up at home that I realised my children had never sat down and written an actual letter. And so a plan was put in place so that every week, each child would write a letter to one of their four grandparents. “You can ask them anything you want,” I said.

I’d love to say that the kids jumped at this suggestion with the same kind of enthusiasm they express when playing their Nintendo Switch, but what started out as a challenge quickly became something they looked forward to, especially once letters started landing on the doormat addressed to them.

Thursdays were earmarked as letter-writing day. Questions ranged from ‘what did your parents do?’ and ‘did you have any pets?’ to ‘what was it like being a teenager when you were young?’ Their grandparents would write funny, engaging and insightful letters in return, sometimes including old photos, too.

Through this exchange of letters, the kids now know so much more about their grandparents. They learned that their Granny sailed on The Windrush when she was evacuated from Egypt as a child and that their greatgrandparents survived the Spanish Flu. Their Nana shared stories of moving house more than 20 times, while Popi regaled tales of having to share a bed with his four brothers, which they once broke when fighting.

Grandpa wrote long letters describing what school punishments were like when he was a child; standing in a corner and writing ‘lines’, being made to take a freezing cold shower or told to run around the cricket pitch three times in under nine minutes – if you took any longer, you were forced to run again! All three kids agreed that they were much happier to be at school in 2021, even if home learning was involved for part of it.

Most interestingly, perhaps, the children have learned that their grandparents haven’t always been old and that they all enjoyed countless adventures before welcoming grandchildren into the world. My husband and I have also discovered new things about our parents. I had no idea, for example, that my mother’s entrepreneurial streak developed at a young age when she’d meet holidaymakers off the bus and charge them to transport their luggage to the nearby caravan site.

As life slowly returns to normal and school days, activities and playdates resume, it’d be easy to swap handwritten notes for text messages and phone calls. But this exchange of letters has been such a rewarding experience for all involved that we’ve promised – both the children and the grandparents – to keep on writing.

Through these letters, the children have learned that their grandparents haven’t always been old