Capital letters
The pandemic has unlocked the forgotten delights of the handwritten note
HEPHZIBAH ANDERSON
ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH BERRY
While you won’t find any majestically old books on my shelves, personal treasures do occasionally materialise, like the notecard that swooped from a slim hardback the other evening. It was embossed with its sender’s name-just as well, since who among us can identify even our closest confidantes by penmanship alone in the age of the instant message?
This six-line missive must have been sitting there for years. It was a rare material reminder of a heady romance that mellowed into precious friendship and, three lockdowns later, feels a lifetime ago. Yes, I’ve texts aplenty-emails, too-but were I to print them all off, their heft couldn’t match the tactile intimacy of pen and ink, nor its time-travelling, multisensory immediacy