We forget, swamped as we are with constant connectivity, the past hunger for letters and news when travelling.  I remember a few years in China and Taiwan, before the advent of email, when we would rush from class to our pigeon holes or letter boxes in the hope there would be a handwritten envelope or aerogramme.

I have lost nothing of the sense of romance that brought and still try, on a modest scale, to perpetuate it.  To my surprise, I’ve discovered that small children love receiving ‘real’ cards and letters.

Try it, send a letter or card this week to someone you know.

‘Mail had come in at last; we had been in Russia only twenty-five days, and it seemed as if we had been cut off for years. We read our letters avidly.’

Source: John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal, with photographs by Robert Capa (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999 (1948)), p. 137

Photo credit: Liam Truong at unsplash