When you receive cards, letters and notes in the post, what do you do with them? Do you pin them to a board, proudly display them on a mantelpiece or shelf, tuck them away in boxes?
Mine frequently end up as bookmarks, which perhaps sounds ungrateful. But it means it has benefits for when I finish a book. You know how you wallow in that lost feeling for a few moments. The feeling where you emerge from a really good book and wonder WHAT ON EARTH you’re going to do now it’s finished. And then ponder whether re-reading four times in a row is verging on obsessive… and then you re-read a little missive from a dear friend and smile. Perfection.
My inspiration board
I also have an inspiration board. On this live the prettiest of the note cards my friends have sent me over the years.
Some are even in frames. Two Gorjuss cards, one featuring books and the other a flying unicorn. Then some horse and ballet-themed ones in collages. And a particularly lovely London panorama are currently adorning my walls and shelves.
Still, others sit on my mantelpiece for a while after they’ve come in. I tend to take them down after I’ve replied to them and replace them with new ones.
And of course there are the boxes and boxes of notes passed in class, post it notes, barely-legible scribbles, journal pages, decorated envelopes, those funny little folded-paper fortune telling contraptions, and pages and pages of handwriting from years of correspondence.
Those are the boxes that are unquestioningly packed, intact, whenever I move house. I wouldn’t give them up for the world. There are few things as lovely as spending a rainy Sunday afternoon with a large pot of tea, your sweet thing of choice (mine is currently profiteroles), and a box of old,half-forgotten letters. You can laugh and cry your way through hours of memories. Highly recommended.
So what do you do with yours?