Letter Writing

Letter writing as a form of communication is to all intents dead and E-mail has delivered the coup de grace. Those who argue that E-mail has greatly enhanced the frequency with which we keep in touch don’t get it. Letters were a leisured form of written communication; they were snapshots of our lives, and required thought and some effort. They required paper, pen, envelopes, stamps and a trip to the postbox. E-mail on the other hand requires nothing but a few hurried words and a tap on the ‘send’ key. Presto, like lightning it arrives next door or at the other side of the world. And now there is ‘texting’ on cellphones which further reduces the message to minimalistic shorthand.
As a boy, I remember my grandfather retiring to his study after breakfast every day to write letters: to friends, family, his brothers in Canada and Sweden. They were letters about nothing and everything: his garden, his grandson, the state of the world, books he had read, of ships and shoes and sealing wax.
I wonder; does anyone still do that? Does anyone sit at a well-worn desk, slide a clean sheet of bond paper from a pigeon-hole and write, simply for the pleasure of communication?
Sadly, I doubt it, and I doubt they ever will again unless...and then they probably wouldn’t know how, because not only has the art of the letter vanished, but also the ability to write legibly, and the ability to compose a half-decent sentence.