Latest news with #letterwriting
Irish Times
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
I read the letter a couple of times. It didn't irritate me...it filled me with joy
I've written before about all the gorgeous letters and cards that have landed in my work pigeonhole since I first wrote about my cancer diagnosis last December. People are kind. There have been home-knitted hats in the post and cool earrings, supportive messages and heartfelt notes, books and other tokens. I am grateful for it all. The flurry of well wishes motivated me to write my own letters to people . Admittedly, not as many as I'd hoped when I began my letter-writing project a few months ago, but definitely more than usual. There is something about the idea of people sitting down with a decent pen, writing a note, finding a stamp and sending it off that moves me every time. So I was happy to see the small brown envelope in my pigeonhole. The stamp depicted James Earley's Irish Deer, a tasteful and artistic choice. The paper was plain white but of decent quality. In the corner, where there's usually an address, the sender wrote simply 'Drogheda'. My name was underlined. Róisín. No 'dear' here, only on the stamp, so I knew this person meant business. 'Róisín:' the letter began, in blue ink and beautiful handwriting. The writer was discussing an error in my column about an event I did last month with Paul Howard at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. 'Róisín: your column today includes 'would you rather ... watch Paul and I ... READ MORE 'Very disappointed with this from a professional writer. Wouldn't mind watching Paul – but, come on, watching I? Really? 'Cheap magazines have amateurs who write 'this bike carried my wife and I all over Ireland' kind of stuff. Carried I? 'Accusative, dative, etc, still apply – not only to amateurs but, especially, to professionals. 'Yours, 'John' Underneath his sign off, John wrote ' ... watch Paul and me ….' in case I might not have realised what I ought to have written. I read the letter a couple of times. You might think I'd find it irritating, in fact the letter filled me with joy. It seemed like a sign that things were back to normal and the statute of limitations on all that cancer sympathy had expired. I mean if John from Drogheda felt able to write, giving out about my use of I, then normal service really had resumed and I, for one, could not have been happier about this. I imagined John, a retired schoolteacher perhaps, sitting down with a cup of tea thinking: 'Yes, the woman has cancer but that does not mean I should not take her to task for the improper use of I. She's a professional writer, for goodness sake.' [ I'm enjoying my new friendship. We're at the stage when everything is fascinating Opens in new window ] And John is right. Just because I have a challenging illness, doesn't mean I should be allowed to play fast and loose with the English language in The Irish Times. It reminded me of when I used to play Scrabble at Gerry's house every Tuesday while undergoing weekly chemotherapy sessions. A good friend, he nevertheless made zero allowances. There was one time when I tried to play the high-scoring word Taxol, the name of my chemotherapy, but he told me that it was a brand name and therefore not valid. To emphasise the point, he told me to 'get that sh*t off the board' – our preferred phrase when somebody chances their arm Scrabble-istically speaking – even as my hair fell out in clumps at his kitchen table. I loved his adherence to the rules in the face of all the cancer carry-on in the same way I adore John's letter, which is now stuck to my fridge with a magnet. On reflection, I realise my deplorable use of I has its roots in being corrected as a child in school or at home for saying 'me and Shirley went to the shops'. 'It's Shirley and I ,' not 'Shirley and me ' I can hear my mother saying. My instinct had actually been to write Paul and me , in fact I believe I wrote Paul and me originally, but then a voice in my head said 'It's Paul and I ', and so I changed it on account of trying to write proper. What a fail. I have since conducted a small bit of research. Grammar nerds (and also John) will know this already, but 'Paul and me' is correct because 'me' is the object of the verb 'watch'. A good way to know when to use me, is to remove the other person's name to test it. 'Would you rather watch me …?' Would you rather watch I sounds completely wrong in this context. On the other hand, if the subject comes before the verb, I is the correct usage. 'Paul and I went to the cinema to see the John Lennon documentary' is correct. To be even more precise, subject pronouns such as I are used when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, the one doing the action. Object pronouns, such as me , are used when the pronoun is the object of the sentence, the one receiving the action or following a preposition. Now, if this column does not appear on some class of State exam next summer I'm going to be, as John from Drogheda would put it, very disappointed. I actually think me and John could be friends. Or is it John and I? Answers on a postcard with some class of an arty looking stamp, please.
Daily Mail
14-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Last post for the letter as Royal Mail falls into foreign hands?
Prepare to say a long farewell to the birthday card, the thank-you note and the love letter. The get-well card is set for a terminal decline. Letter-writing has been a dwindling art for some time, but the takeover of the Royal Mail by Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky looks set to accelerate its demise. Home deliveries of letters are already ending in Denmark and being slashed in other countries in Europe as postal service owners seek to cut costs. Observers say Kretinsky will follow suit in the UK. Its fate was sealed earlier this month when Royal Mail's parent, International Distribution Services (IDS), de-listed from the London stock market. It marked the end of an era for Royal Mail, which was founded in 1516 under the reign of Henry VIII, and has now fallen into foreign hands following the £3.6 billion takeover bid from Kretinsky's EP Group. Investors in IDS who accepted Kretinsky's offer for their shares received their cheques in the post – but that could soon become a thing of the past. In Denmark, Royal Mail's equivalent, PostNord, will stop delivering letters to people's homes after 400 years at the end of December. Danes will be forced to rely on costly private companies instead. PostNord cited the impact of email and other electronic message systems on letter and card writing in its decision. Danish post boxes, which like Britain's are easily recognisable with their crown motif and striking red colour, will begin to disappear from streets this month. France is cutting back on letter deliveries too. State-owned La Poste sparked outrage earlier this year when it began to remove some of its 120,000 post boxes. Germany's Deutsche Post, owned by logistics giant DHL, in March revealed plans to slash 8,000 jobs, blaming it on dwindling letter volumes. In the UK, letter deliveries direct to people's homes began in 1661 when the first postmaster general was appointed by King Charles II. Today, under a set of rules known as the universal service obligation (USO), Royal Mail is required to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week. But Royal Mail has said repeatedly that its letters business is costing it hundreds of millions of pounds a year. It has raised stamp prices by record levels despite outrage from customers. Under plans being considered by the postal regulator Ofcom, set to be finalised this summer, these obligations are being watered down. The Government will retain a golden share in Royal Mail following the Kretinsky takeover. Any changes to its ownership, tax residency or where its headquarters is will need Ministers' approval. Royal Mail is also under a legal obligation to have at least one post box within half a mile of 98 per cent of the UK population. Even so, there are fears that service will be eroded, causing huge detriment to communities. Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, said: 'Daily delivery days for rural areas are for many a lifeline. 'Cutting these back would be a 'death spiral' for the valued, door-to-door, universal service and a slippery slope to losing the post service altogether,' he said. Alarm is growing among business groups that rely on the postal service to send their products to consumers. Amanda Fergusson, head of the Greeting Card Association, which represents about 500 businesses, said higher stamp prices are leading to even fewer letters and cards being sent. She said: '62 per cent of people are sending few letters precisely because of rising prices.' A Royal Mail spokesman said: 'We remain committed to offering choice, value and a reliable service for all our customers.' Letter volumes have fallen from 20 billion a year at their peak in 2004-5 to 6.7 billion in 2023-4. Fans of the UK's much-loved red post boxes, many of which sport quirky knitted toppers depicting topical scenes, hope they will not disappear with letter deliveries. Robert Cole of the Letter Box Study Group said: 'Many pillar boxes have openings big enough to take small parcels.' He added that Royal Mail had started adapting them for this purpose, also using GPS and barcodes. 2nd class to be even slower Royal Mail has been given a slap on the wrist by its watchdog over plans to slash deliveries from next month. The postal service told businesses it would cut second-class services to just three days a week from July 7. But Ofcom told Royal Mail boss Emma Gilthorpe that 'no decisions' on approval had been made, adding: 'Any reference by Royal Mail to specific dates is premature.' Royal Mail has been trying out reduced deliveries in 37 towns and cities since February, affecting a million households. It wants to cut targets for first and second-class mail after facing fines for missing goals. Currently, it must deliver letters six days a week to all 32 million UK addresses. It has been lobbying to change this for nearly five years saying it costs up to £2 million a day, and is no longer needed with fewer letters posted. Ofcom will make a decision this summer.
Irish Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Re-reading my teenage diaries: joy and pain radiates off the pages
I didn't realise it at the time, but I came of age at the very end of an era. As someone who was born in the 1970s, I turned out to be part of the very last generation of habitual letter writers. For centuries, people with the means and the education had left written traces of themselves behind. Some wrote diaries; almost all wrote letters. When I started college in 1993, letters were the only way of keeping in touch with faraway friends. But then, incredibly quickly, everything changed. During my college years I wrote dozens of letters – letters to friends on Erasmus or summers abroad, letters from my own summers in Berlin and Boston. Sometimes I abandoned a letter and left it unfinished, tucked inside a notebook or folder pad, because so much had happened since I started writing it, the letter was out of date. But in the summer of 1997, just after I graduated, I got my first email address. And letters vanished from my life completely. While I was writing those letters, I also kept a diary, documenting my life (or more accurately, my extremely dramatic feelings about my life) in a series of ring-bound notebooks. For decades those unfinished letters and diaries were hidden away in my wardrobe and in a box in my parents' house. Until last summer, when I unearthed them and found myself travelling back in time. My first novel for adults, Our Song, is the story of Tadhg and Laura, who were bandmates in college before their friendship ended acrimoniously when they were 21. Sixteen years later their lives are very different – Tadhg is a massively successful musician, while Laura's just been laid off from her advertising job. But then Tadhg contacts Laura and asks her to finish a song they started writing together in their college days. The novel's narrative moves between the older Tadhg and Laura as they rediscover their old musical and personal chemistry, and the story of their younger, messier selves. And that's where my diaries and letters came in. READ MORE It's a long time, to put it bluntly, since I was 21. If I wanted to accurately capture the feelings of the younger Laura, I needed to remind myself what it felt like to be young and messy and full of big emotions. I needed to remember what it felt like to make stupid romantic choices, to never be honest about my feelings, to have my heart broken. Luckily, I had the perfect means to do just that. [ Anna Carey: 'Today's teenagers are pleasingly similar to my generation' Opens in new window ] When I opened the large cloth-covered notebook that covered the period of my life from 1994 to summer 1997, I thought reading about my college years for the first time in decades might be funny. I knew it would be helpful for the book. I didn't, for one second, predict that it would be so emotionally intense. Back when I wrote my first young adult novels, I had looked at my diaries from my mid-teens and laughed at the melodrama of my little teenage self. That girl from the early 1990s felt like a kid. She felt like another person. But the writer of my college diaries didn't feel like another person. She felt like me. Younger, of course, and much messier and more dramatic, but to my own surprise I didn't feel a massive sense of distance between the person who wrote about her college heartbreaks and the fortysomething reading about them three decades later. And so when I read my way through that notebook and the one that followed, I was reliving the highs and lows of my mid-1990s life. I found myself feeling genuinely angry with people I hadn't thought of in decades, about incidents I had totally forgotten. I found myself emotionally experiencing all of it. My joy and my pain radiated off the page so strongly, it was almost overwhelming, decades later. Anna Carey at Two Pups Cafe in Fairview, Dublin After I told a friend about my weirdly emotional research project, she unearthed the letters I'd written to her back in the day. Then I found the letters she wrote to me, and for weeks we photographed and WhatsApped every page of our 1990s correspondence to each other, both of us weeping with laughter over long-ago misadventures. And it wasn't just letters. In college, to practise her typing, my friend went through a phase of transcribing our conversations on her family computer as we chatted in her house. Miraculously, she found printouts of these transcripts and suddenly there we were, our brilliant, hilarious, stupid young selves, with our in-jokes and personal dramas, talking about gigs and parties and people we forgot about decades ago. It made me laugh until I cried and then suddenly to my surprise I was crying not with laughter, but at the sheer intensity of this contact with my own youth. It's a strange thing, going back in time. And sometimes you realise the story you've told yourself about that period could have been a very different one. Reading my diaries and letters, I could clearly see the narrative I created for myself at the time, one that I internalised and that still affected how I saw my younger days. But decades later, I saw that I could have chosen to tell a very different story. My younger self made decisions that, at the time, I refused to see were decisions. I put up with situations that were making me angry and miserable when I could have just walked away. Early on in college a boy told me he wasn't in love with me any more. At the time it was the most blunt, hurtful thing anyone had ever said to me, one that hung over me for months. Unsurprisingly, I remembered that all too well. But I had no memory of the fact, documented in my diary almost as an aside, that he told me it was because he didn't think I had ever really been in love with him. And looking back, I realised he had been right (on that point, at least). But when I was young and hurting, I didn't see it that way, or I didn't care, because what mattered was that he had rejected me. After writing that detail in my diary I forgot about it. How would the next year of my life have been different if I hadn't forgotten the part I'd played in that relationship's end? If I'd framed the incident as one in which I wasn't totally passive? It made me wonder what stories I'm telling myself about my life now. That's a lot to get from a 31-year-old notebook from Miss Selfridge. [ How I turned my book The Making of Mollie into a play – with a little help from some young innovators Opens in new window ] The French writer Henry de Montherlant famously wrote that 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page' and so it's not surprising that most of my diary entries were full of angst. In summer 1997 I went to Boston and fell in love with an American man (Gen Z might disapprove of age-gap relationships but they have nothing on my generation; my friend unearthed a letter to a mutual pal in which she wrote that 'Anna has two jobs and a Texan lover who's 25 '. Bear in mind I turned 22 towards the end of that summer so this was hardly a problematic gap). I was very, very happy and in a healthy romantic relationship for the first time in my life, and I hardly wrote in my diary all summer, apart from a few breathless lines marvelling over my magical good luck. It was the American boy who set up my first email address for me, and when I tearfully returned to Dublin we corresponded not via letters but emails, all of which vanished into the digital ether long ago. I didn't know it, but that was the beginning of the end for me and letters. My diary writing continued, but it also petered out after I got together with my now-husband back in 2001. My diary thrived on drama, and a happy, settled relationship is not very dramatic. Anna Carey and her husband-to-be Patrick Freyne on stage with their band El Diablo circa 2000. But then, to my surprise, both diary writing and letters returned to my life. About 10 years ago I got a 'one line a day' five-year diary, a dated journal in which you write a single sentence about each day. It wasn't like my old diary, where I poured out my soul, but it was a written record of my day to day life – something I wished I'd done more back in the '90s, instead of spending my summer in Berlin writing very little about my magical experiences in an amazing city at an incredible time in its history but a lot about my stupid boy-related angst. Letters returned in an unexpected form. At the height of lockdown in 2020, the New Yorker magazine writer Rachel Syme started a pen pal exchange, and I signed up. I've been corresponding with my Brooklyn pen pal Erin for five years now; we hit it off from the first letter, and I love that there are now written records of our lives and thoughts and feelings on each side of the Atlantic. When I was writing my new book, I wrote to Erin about its progress, sharing the highs and the lows. It makes me happy knowing that somewhere in Brooklyn is a series of postcards and letters telling the story of how I wrote Our Song. For a book that couldn't have been written without handwritten journals and letters, it feels just right. I think my younger self would approve. Our Song is published by Hachette Ireland. Anna Carey will be talking to Sinéad Moriarty as part of the Dalkey Book Festival on June 14th.
Washington Post
09-05-2025
- General
- Washington Post
Miss Manners: No acknowledgment after sending condolence letters
Dear Miss Manners: I was taught by my mother and grandmother, who practiced what they preached, that condolence letters are to be acknowledged. Their practice was to answer every condolence letter with a return letter. It could be long or short, but at the very least it should express gratitude for the sender's thoughtfulness.
