The Longhand Letter ~ Second Edition (2024)

Pop it in the Post Please, Dear

This postbox has been here for more than a century. It is on the Prestbury Road just beyond Pittville Circus roundabout if heading into town. The Havana Coffee House and the premises next door is where Mr Gillier the Grocer supplied provisions to 20 and 25 Windsor Street a hundred meters the other side of the circus; the letter box to which I’d post letters for Grandma, and while you’re there dear, take my purse and ask Mr Gillier for a cabbage and when the next bananas might be in, please? And remember, at the Circus, do as we always do, look right, left, and right again and only cross if safe to do so.

Haha! The Circus.

One day I accompanied my Aunt Bette who lived at Number Twenty. And as I did with Grandma, I took her hand. I’ll never forget it. ‘Ken. You’re a young man now. Don’t hold my hand, but you may take my arm!’ When I reported said promotion to my parents that evening, they laughed and as I walked out feeling twenty feet tall (even though I was only eight or nine years old at most), I heard Mum chuckle. ‘I don’t know. That’s just typical of Bette, Des! And Dad’s very knowing chuckle in reply!! ‘He’ll be wanting long trousers next!!’

Now, there’s a thought!!!!

The Longhand Letter ~ Second Edition (2024)

… that wonderful rising Blackpool Tower; of delight and happy memories to millions down two centuries

I

“How enjoyable
to be sitting in the couch
drinking a tea,
listening to quiet music
and as the oil is perfuming the flat,
reading your letter, Hugs.”

Ludovico et Heidi
Madrid, Granada 

II

A longhand letter
arriving by land-post via Airmail,
a Century ago
by P&O or Cunard Liners.

In person, Personal, Confidential.
Of intimate confidences and pleasures
that no E-mail, Instagram, Facebook,
Wattsapp, Blog, Twitter or X
can equal.

To feel the crispness of pages
last touched by their author,
To see the ink, deletions,
blotting, occasional erasing,
As the writer attempts
a better phrase
to convey the meaning;
perhaps most intimate of all
in a brief, oh so brief,
and unintended palm-print or finger-print…
The face behind the veil.

To receive a dispatch
from another continent,
a window on the world
of a different civilisation,
three weeks or more
in passage arriving.

III

Seventy years on,
let your hand flow
freely across the paper;
Stay away from cyber.

Rebuke the keyboard.
Return to Paper
The Cartridge Pen, even.

And if you’re really ambitious
and desire that uniqueness
that intimacy of touch,
Then bottled ink
Conveyed by Gold or Chromium Nib.

These, dear Reader,
are the art and craft
of writing.

IV

The longhand letter
is free of cut and paste,
That illusory patchwork
of irregular writing
bewitching you
into believing
these words are just for you …
Yet circulated
to all and sundry,
Sometimes openly,
but more oft by that
horridly hidden

Silent, secretive, conniving
Blind carbon copy,
To you and me, though,
Simply bcc!

Sadly, you know different.

The scissors are obvious.
The glue is not
that which binds your souls
but is someone else’s,
And it hurts to relegate
friendship to second class status
on the pretence of a
first class standing.

The signed off name
is but the default signature
in a different font and hue,
and masquerading so cunningly,
its writer thinks,
That ancient First Class Stamp.

V

So encourage others
by writing to them
the individual longhand letter.

VI

Mark your envelope
with the locale
from which it comes,
A town or city,
Seaside resort,
Coffee house, Tea shop
A park, a Promenade even;
Something that denotes
your individuality...
And above all
the uniqueness of your letter,
and thereby…

The Uniqueness of You, dear Reader.

A ‘one-off’
Written to your friend,
Your Loved one,
Even your Lover

Let that be the most
intimate communication,
Joining afresh two halves
of one whole,
as in former days.

Such communication
is no less physical,
and is as intimate, sometimes even more so,
as those times together,
That physicality of presence.

VII

Have your pen and paper
with you,
If not,
a napkin will do.
And with your hand
and prompt dispatch by land post
and airmail,
it transforms into an heirloom,
Priceless,
A window on the world
of an earlier generation,
A different era,
A different time,
A different long-lost way of life
The Treasure of our Ancestors
Now treasured beyond description,
by your descendants.

VIII

Don't fall for the coldness
of the cyber letter,
Silly sentiments
uttered on a whim
without foundation,
without meaning,
Hanging merely
on that ubiquitous
send key.

No! Let the time
you spend in Absentia
from your loved one
be so physical,
So abounding,
So descriptive,
That from transforms to with
Unending.

Ian Bradley Marshall
Liverpool

16 Lord Street, Blackpool, 12.50am

First written January 19, 2010

10 September 2024
All Rights Reserved


LIVERPOOL

© 2010 Ian Bradley Marshall © 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Digital Artwork is by © 2024 KTW © 2024 IBM unless otherwise credited.

Author’s Epilogue

In the peaceful quietude of the Parisian Room
at the top of the stairs
and through the door, 
a real haven
with just the sound of the seagulls above, 
wet and damp downstairs with that clinging mist off the sea,
but up here, dimmed lights and a cup of tea;

an intimate connection with Granada, 
those cosy fireside chats with Mark and Steve
~ the world put to rights ~
and stroking the Cats,
And just across the way ~ my friend;
that wonderful rising Blackpool Tower;
Of delight and happy memories
to Millions
Down the centuries.

© 2021 KTW © 2021 IBM

Last published 27 February 2021.

One of the Blackpool Piers. Always an enjoyable stopping off point on the Coastal Road from the office in Lytham St Annes, where I could enjoy my chips and see how quickly I could eat them before the Seagulls scored another victory! When they were too aggressive, they showed their displeasure when I then retreated to the safety of the car! Great Times in 2009-2010. KTW © 2024 KTW

Aunt Bette (1941) “You may take my arm, Ken.” I was firmly reminded that I was now old enough to do so, “We don’t hold hands. Come along.”

Yet to graduate to long trousers … now THERE’s a thought!

Letters home from Ken, my uncle, on pilot training in Alabama, USA are an absolute delight …a window onto an age long gone. From what Dad has said over a lifetime, the ‘you may take my arm’ moment, his brother Ken would have pulled his sister-in-law's leg a lot. And as we see from these family archive photographs, life continued despite the world being at total war. Ken Webb Jnr. I like these photographs simply because of their transience. This is the only time my smile seems to capture that of the chap whose name I have, for within two years, my smile was most definitely that of his brother, my Dad, Des Webb.