Excerpt – Letter writing
Children were refreshing little beasts and you could always hand them back at the end of the session. Refreshment was best served in moderation.
For now, though, she could catch up on unpacking and correspondence.
Dear Jasmine,
Do you remember the dreadful, naff, patronising
Mal sighed to herself. Play nicely. Scrunching up the sheet of paper, she threw it into the kindling basket by the woodstove, picked up her pen, giving the ink a quick shake to the nib, and started again.
Dear Jasmine,
Do you remember that charming, lovely, inspirational
Another ball of paper sailed towards the basket and landed a foot away. She knew the last shot had been a fluke. Writing to her nephew’s wife was always so difficult. Giles was a lovely boy, but she hadn’t had the highest expectations for him. In marrying Jasmine, he hadn’t even met those. The problem was that whilst Jasmine was as much an airhead as Giles, Mal could turn a blind eye to his faults as she had known and loved him all his life. Jasmine had arrived fully formed and vapid.
Stretching her fingers, she started again.
Dear Jasmine,
Do you remember that book you sent me with lots of motivational ideas? Well, I have been trying something out and taking a photo every day of an image that pleases me. I am building up quite a gallery of the sights around me and taking great pleasure in it. In fact, Will has shown me how to add these to an Instagram account, so that I may see them altogether in one place.
She had been uncertain at first, but Will, one of her godsons, had assured her she could keep her account private. He’d explained hashtags but when he said they were to help people find her posts, she wrote back reminding him that defeated the purpose of a private account.
He replied #rebel, which made her smile. She knew he was making some sort of joke, but she was uncertain what it was. She continued with her letter to Jasmine.
I am now on my seventh day here and already have hundreds of images. Will says the trick is to narrow those down to a few images that really refine the experience. His actual words were, avoid image dumping, but I believe that was what he meant.
Without your kind gift, I may never have thought of doing this and I just wanted to drop a quick note to say thank you.
With love
M
Blotting the paper, she folded it, popped it into an envelope and added a second class stamp. The stamp annoyed her, but first class stamps were so damned expensive and for the amount of correspondence she had, the bill soon added up. Several of her family had suggested that she could now send texts and e-mails, but she had developed the habit of letter writing whilst inside and wanted to continue it.