AS A millennial, I don’t understand things the older generation are into like home ownership, Morrissey and penetrative sex. Today I’m trying to ‘send a letter’:
Apparently, from Shakespeare’s day to like the 1980s, it was customary for people to communicate by ‘letter’. I’m quite into historical stuff, like my dad’s Blur CDs, so sending a letter seemed like a cool way to learn about the past. How wrong was I?
‘Letters’ are pieces of paper with messages on, and you can’t just download them from the internet. Even if you did you’d have to print them, which okay? They pre-date even texting and take several days to arrive, like the ravens in Game of Thrones.
So I got a piece of paper and the problems started. Who was I going to send my letter to? There’s my mum, but I see her in the kitchen all the time. Zelensky’s cool, but he’s always being bothered by Brits with problems. So I settled for my girlfriend, Jenna.
I began by drawing emojis, then cut-and-pasted – this is something you can do by hand – part of the Wikipedia page on medieval torture, to bulk it out.
I felt I should include something romantic, so I wrote, ‘Thanks for wanking me off last week lol’. Made it a meme by drawing Garfield saying ‘Thanks for the wank!!!’ and that was sorted.
Was it fuck. Now you’ve got to put the letter in an ‘envelope’, which is like a large, paper cocaine bag, and you can’t scrunch it up into a ball, you have to fold it really precisely to make it fit, like origami. Then you have to write the address on it, and it’s really long with a postcode on, which apparently isn’t just a drill rap thing.
Worst of all is you have to put a sticker of the Queen on, which is morally wrong to me. They cost 95p. If you sent 20 letters a day that’s £19. It’s not like the Queen needs the money now she’s dead.
Fucking finally, you’re tweeting, but no. I still had to take it to a post box in the pissing rain. Then I stood by the letter box waiting for a reply until my dad came out pissing himself to tell me you don’t get a reply straight away. This is insane.
It’s been three days and I’ve heard nothing. Jenna must have dumped me. I’ve DMed Oaklyn, her best mate, to see if I can get a handie off her instead. I can’t believe this was how people used to communicate in the olden days. No wonder Romeo and Juliet split up.