Longhand

When was the last time you wrote a page-long handwritten letter? Right, you probably can’t remember. Neither could I. But a few days ago, the fountain pen was calling out from its dusty corner in the bottom drawer. So I sat down at the table, blank piece of paper in front of me, armoured with pen. And after five minutes, all that had appeared was “Chère Erika” (our lovely landlady in Barbizon). This wasn’t working.
I flipped open my laptop, and in less than ten minutes the letter was written, even in flawless French. Talking ‘bout conditioned behaviour…
I sat down at the table again, and carefully copied each word from the screen.
When my letter was finished, I felt as proud as more than 25 years ago after writing my very first word “aap”*



* meaning “monkey”, and it really was the first word I learned to write