wendy house

Please could you arrange for good ideas to arrive with clear steps on how to realise their potential.

Yesterday a good idea arrived like a large flock of  rooks attempting to roost in a rather small woodshed – a lot of wing flapping, sqwarking -  unnecessary fuss. It’s a tad discombobulating.

I don’t mind a wee bit of searching, calming, ducking, cleaning, sorting and praising. But it woud be rather nice to have the occassional good idea arrive as a yellow brick road with time for me to walk tall, breath deeply and wear a stylish pair of sunglasses as the idea unfolds.

Thank you, yours sincerely, wendy-flocking-a-fab-inspiration

People who have recieved one of my hand written letters have all used their phone’s to let me know, on the day the letter arrived. I have recieved texts and phone calls, its lovely. Lovely because they are not automatic, system generated, confirmations. They are exhuberantly happy, personalised, stories which make my day brighter.

Sometimes automating functionality, like message-reciept can remove the communicative properties that add value beyond knowing that, they remove the knowing how. An automated reciept confirmation would let me ‘know that’ the message was recieved but not give me any clue to ‘how’ the person experienced recieving the message.

From the above text I know that the letter recipient recognised my writing before even opening the letter.  She knew it was from me. I can reasonably infer that she was happy at this point before even opeing the letter, then she expresses how enduring this experience is for her. Definitely something worth my doing again. Before phone usage was common, the main way that I knew a letter had arrived was when I recieved a letter written in response, often days, weeks, or months later.

By contrast, here on the blog, I suspect the emotional impact of my writing is less durable. Partly because it isn’t personal. A blog post is for the author or an audience, not for an individual. I only know ‘how’ the post is recieved when people take the time to write a comment or click on the hearts to illustrate that they like it. Many more people read the posts than leave me feedback on how they experienced it.

replacing the ink cartridge in a fountain pen, not a dot-matrix or jet printer

Do you remember the experience of your pen sporadically supplying ink, tapping the nib on a spare piece of paper to make sure the ink is all at the bottom of the cartridge? That time when you still have ink, but the inconsistent flow makes your writing messy. Unscrewing my pen confirmed that the cartridge was near-as-damn-it empty

The 5 page letter below is to a friend who rarely uses the computer, email, her mobile phone and she definitely doesn’t have a facebook account. Rebel!

Letter writing involved

• a traditional format – senders address on the top right hand side above the date
• a traditional opening phrase ‘Dear (name),’
• the first spelling challenge in the 3rd sentence
• hastily omited letters retrospectively inserted into words (squishing, writing a letter above the word and placing an arrow below it)
• smudges,I’m not sure how, they just arrived
• crossing-out letters that had over-enthusiastically added to words where they did not belong. I round the letter ‘r’ was the biggest offender, wishing to be in every word it can be. Liquid paper (Tippex) might head-off these rogue arse in future letters
• hand-ache by the 2nd page
• writing on only one side of the page
• use of blotting-paper
• an illustrative sketch per page
• Regular tea breaks helped prevent my pulling a muscle
• a pleasing end result that fitted in the envelope and awaits carrying to a letter-box

I made the squiggly white lines using ‘Paint‘ to obscure the personal contents.

PS 254 word post before the PS

Dear Alice,

Thank you for your Christmas card, there’s no need to apologise, I still love you. You are special, I hardly notice my birthday nowadays anyway. Seem’s like you think your mind has been mush for years now, I don’t see or hear the mush, you are still as bright and beautiful as the Monday night in the alternative disco. Do you remember? The two prats who had made a big killing on the horses and thought we’d be impressed by money? You whacked me so hard on my new tattoo that my squeals of pain quickly reduced us to piles of mutual laughter and baffled the bullshit out of the guys! Forgive yourself, laugh again.

I know you love your step daughter, two sons and husband. You don’t tell me so, but I know you love them, it shows in the all-engulfing way that you support the smooth running of their lives. The meals you cook, the shopping you do, the events you attend, the cleaning, the taxi-driving, the advice. I hear how your life is all about making their lives easier. The girl I knew was always passionate about organising things, how else could you graduate with such a good degree in Library studies. You, engulfed in stories and classification. You were in ecstacy! I remember the stories of how you sorted out the Munich Siemens office, then in the 1990′s the local Berlin Government ‘lost and found’ office by pairing people separated by the wall using just a card system, then arranging Premier entertainment for visiting Warner Brothers stars. You are so good at sorting things and entertaining people.

Somehow you reserve the pain for me, you talk of your disappointments and burden. I wonder where is the happiness hiding, bring it out, I miss it, I love you

W x