The Word Cloud

This short letter, written in pencil, was sent to my Nan by her sister and was found amongst her possessions. The date at the top, is just “Tuesday”.
A meaningless letter? No, it’s nine words that tell so much.

1. Nobody had phones.
2. The littlest thing had to be written in a letter, stamped, and walked to the postbox, a day or two in advance. People had conversations by letter, no need for preamble or lengthy sign-offs. These conversations could stretch over days.
3. Luce doesn’t say a time, and expects that Nell will be in, whenever she arrives. If not, she’ll wait, confident that Nell will appear soon.
4. There’s no allowance for Nell to say it’s not convenient, she’s away, she’s doing something else.
5. It took two buses to get from Luce’s to Nell’s; add on the walk to and from the bus stop and the wait in between, it’s a journey of well over an hour, but she proposed it anyway. Does this show their easy familiarity?  Tell us that life was much more predictable? That Luce knew Nell would be free on Thursday because she always was? And Nell knew what time Luce would arrive because she always did?
6. It’s the kind of thing that would now be an email or text.

I recall in my university holidays, my group of friends would all write to each other, even over Christmas when we were only apart a fortnight. We found the time, each day or other day, to write to each other, to find the Basildon Bond, or the cute writing paper with matching envelopes in lilac or pink with a picture in the corner, to choose the pen with the nicest or funkiest nib, to write everything that had happened that day and what we thought about it. Pages and pages.
If the letter were to a special boy, we might spray perfume on it, or apply lipstick and kiss the back.

The arrival of the postman was exciting.

I can’t remember when I last hand-wrote a letter; or received one. Probably Christmas or my birthday, but these are summary newsletters, not representations of daily life.

Now I write emails, containing the minutiae of my day. But where’s the record of them? Hard-drives break, computers are thrown away. I never print off emails.
When it’s time for someone to sort through my belongings, a great swathe of my life will be lost for ever – the friends I had, the way my life was. No one will ever know.

Do you think that future historians will mine computer dumps for evidence of personal lives at the turn of the millennium? How else will they ever find out?
It will never be so easy to read a discarded hard drive as it is to untie a bundle of letters and reconstruct times gone by. Does it matter?

Saturday 9:30am it's drizzling
but still I here the charming melodies
of garden birds calling away
From the window where I sit
I can see out onto the street
All is quiet except for the odd fluttering
and the familiar cheery face
of the postman doing his rounds
as a yappy dog sees him on his way

The recognisable clatter of my letterbox
Followed by the flipping, flapping, flop
of letters falling on to my tiled floor
I rise from my chair to retrieve them
White envelopes and a variety of junk mail
No difference there then
Just how  long ago was it
Since I last received a cheery hello,
miss you, thankyou, love you?

I blame it all on modern technology of course
Never did I think I too would be entangled by the web
Too old now for that
my schooling long since passed
But no, slowly I get caught up into emails
Facebook, Twitter and the likes
Being pretty housebound it brought me company
I/we made new friends together
And now look forward to my newer daily mailbox

Even with computer progression the unwanted mail comes
Not the bills, reminders nor bank
They're mainly formalities with direct debits anyway
But scammers and unwanted advertisers
That push their way into your home
no matter how you try to block them
So desperate are they to clench a deal
In this climate of recession
Where so many have no work

This is one of the cleverest
E-mails I've received in awhile.
Someone out there either has too much
spare time or is deadly at Scrabble.
(Wait till you see the last one)!  

DORMITORY:  
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM.

PRESBYTERIAN:  
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:  
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:  
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:  !
When you rearrange the letters:  
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:  
When you rearrange the letters:  
HE BUGS GORE


THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:  
HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME
 
ANIMOSITY:  
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

 SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:  
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S

 A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
IM A DOT IN PLACE

 THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

 ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE
 

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:  
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER  

Yep! Someone with waaaaaaaaaaay
too much time on their hands! (Probably a son-in-law)

 

 

I know we all hate emails, but be careful: our hatred of them is producing an unfortunate side-effect. The drive to make emails succinct and to-the-point is in the process stripping all the colour out of the English language.  Of course you want to get through your 300 emails a day as quickly as possible, but wouldn’t you like just one or two of them to have a touch of the poetic, to lift your spirits a little?

So, for anyone who wants to inject a bit of colour into their emails, here are some literary role models for you to emulate….

 

From: William Shakespeare

To: Product Manager, toothpaste

Subject: Sales figures for January

 

I write, my liege, with news of some alarm.

Hereto attached, a document you’ll find,

Whose meat and substance, I am sure,

Will drain the very colour from your jowls.

In brief, we are undone: our foe gains ground,

And from our grasp has wrenched our market share.

His advertising, like a weed, at first

Has semblance of a flower, pastel-hued.

But when our docile customer leans in,

Its scent to savour, then its tendrils cruel

Break through the soil, bind their victim fast

And choke the life from our superior stems.

This tangled foliage we must strim away,

And with much haste: Cry ‘havoc!’ and conduct

A focus group; note well consumer trends,

Then conjure up the alchemy of Branding

And with its banner upward, march to war.

Thus this unweeded garden shall we till,

So it becomes our cust’mers favoured place.

There is no other course, it needs be so:

For in this age doth Marketing hold sway,

And ‘neath its yoke we mortals must obey.

 

From: Charles Dickens

To: Product Manager, toothpaste

Subject: Regional Focus Group results, Brighton

My dearest colleague,

Nothing – I repeat, sir, nothing – causes me quite so much wonder as the infinite variety of manners, humours and physical stature brought about by human evolution, so clearly in evidence in the ragged assemblage brought together in the name of research – to wit, the membership of this week’s focus group.  As our esteemed marketing manager Mr Ponsonby Pumblecrud busied himself with the many minutiae which seem to form the largest part of his employ (of the precise nature of which we lesser mortals remain in ignorance), and while in his shadow nimbly crept Mrs Dora Dilworthy the brand manager, with the demeanour of one who peeps from behind the knees of a giant, and yet in so doing sees the true meaning of things, I afforded myself the luxury of a few minutes to take in the scene before me.  Oh, how wondrous it is that the promise of free samples brings forth such a seething throng, ever eager to serve their country in return for floss and mouthwash!

My gaze alighted first upon an ill-bred looking fellow with skin like the crust of a raised game pie, engrossing himself in the task of ascertaining the precise quantity of toothpowder which would afford both his teeth and his ample toothbrush the most satisfactory brushing experience – an experience which, to judge by the similarity of his teeth to the barnacle-clad rocks which lay within view of our seaside hotel, might be somewhat new to him; he nevertheless applied himself to the goal of making the highest quality decision possible, having been entreated to do so with great aplomb by his appointed researcher: a marketing student whose own rather more geometrically precise incisors stood out above a chin like a cornfield after the burning of the corn and a neck like a fatty cut of mutton; this individual, benefiting as he doubtless did from the opportunities afforded him by one of our finest educational establishments – a soubriquet which, if one is brutally honest, appears only within the publicity material of that same institution – and subject of course to what space he had left to digest such opportunities, competing as they did with the many demands on his student time (those measuring highest on alcoholic content presumably being afforded a modicum of attention slightly in advance of those which his school and family would consider more worthy of a young gentleman of his bearing); this individual, as I say….  Sorry, I can’t remember how I started the sentence – I’ll email you again in a minute.

 

From: Winnie the Pooh

To: Product manager, toothpaste

Subject:  My resignation

Cottlestone, Cottlestone, Cottlestone Pie,

A fish can’t manage, and neither can I.

I’ve hated this job, so I’m saying ‘goodbye’ -

Cottlestone, Cottlestone, Cottlestone Pie,