I do receive one handwritten letter about 4 times a
year. This is from a friend who is a Luddite and refuses to have the internet
or engage in any form of digital communication. He is also fairly deaf, so
speaking via a landline is tricky. His only means of regular communication with
me, therefore, is to hand write a letter. I respond by mail, but always type
mine, as my handwriting is not the easiest to read.
Will handwriting thus
become a thing of the past, if it hasn’t done already? I hear via teacher relatives and friends and
have seen from my own involvement in schools over the years, that some children
find it far easier to use their fingers and thumbs to handle and control
electronic devices than they do to use a pen or a pencil.
If handwriting is
uncommon today, then obviously in the past, it was the main way of
communication. I buy and sell antiquarian books and I love thumbing through
books and seeing inside different notes and writings from people. It can be a
shopping list, a diary piece, a love note, a comment on the book, or just
someone’s thoughts on life or their day.
The writing is often beautifully
crafted and neatly expressed. Handwriting in years past was an art in itself,
with copperplate style and pen and ink.
Handwriting can have more personal or
sentimental links too. In our family, we
do not have many photographs and so
written memories are very important reminders of who a person was. I have a
diary of a relative’s journey through the Lake District in the early 1900’s,
which makes fascinating reading and gives a thoughtful insight into their lives
at that time.
The main memory I have of my father is due to his handwritten
talks and notes that he left and to which I sometimes refer when I give talks
of my own, or when I am drawn to thinking about him.
Handwriting has and
always will have an important place in my life, but I wonder what place it has
in yours and whether it will have any place in future generations?
In honour
of the theme of writing I am including a favourite poem by Seamus Heaney:
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Thank you for reading, David.
3 comments:
All so very true. My own handwriting has deteriorated. I have some essays that I wrote ..aged 16 or thereabouts and still have handwritten poems from my teenage years..which I am loathe to change as there are also doodles and wee drawings on the same paper...they are a link to my past.
I do keep a diary which is written in capital letters as I feel my script writing is getting so bad. Maybe I need to 'do better' ?
Most interesting David. I still own ink pens and my daughters and I still hand-write letters to each other, plus I have a handful of school/uni friends with whom I converse occasionally by post, but 95% of all my written correspondence is electronic these days and has been for maybe 20 years. The relative ease and immediacy of email has taken its toll. Maybe we'll regret in time that much of that correspondence is ephemeral and to be (if not already) deleted.
I've not hand-written a letter in years. I used to correspond with an aunt but her writing became so hard to decipher I eventually persuaded her to get email. That ls a great choice of poem. 👍
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