Sunday, September 29, 2019

the hand that wrote this letter

hey there


many thanks indeed, look you see, to those erratic types at Royal Mail. why? well, recently they took it upon themselves to send me a lavish, quite expensive looking booklet, promoting some stamps they were selling what had Elton John on them.

this was quite a high class booklet, printed on good quality, thick and shiny hard paper. believe me, i had every intention of showcasing it here, but - alas - i cannot seem to find it. perhaps i have placed it in recycling, or maybe i had some accident with it, like dropping it into a large body of olive oil or similar such liquid.

anyway, prompted by this clearly high cost promotion, i logged on to the website of Royal Mail and had a bit of a gander at what they had on offer. having weighed up the relative and comparative merits and cons of Elton John stamps, i elected to make a purchase.



yes, i decided that the best thing to go and do was to purchase some more (further?) of the David Bowie stamps they issued a little while ago. well, they were still available, and if we are honest about it fairness states that i am something of a Bowie fan rather than an admirer of Sir Elton. not that one could not appreciate both, i suppose.

believe it or not i really did try and find some of the Sir Elton stamps to purchase. what it came down to, however, was that none of his albums were ones i would care to send on a letter rather than a Bowie one. also, i would argue, whilst he is iconic and some (quite a few) of his songs have an iconic status, none of his albums really are. the closest is probably the celebrated Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, but then again it comes down to would i rather send that than, say, Aladdin Sane or "heroes"?

the vast wealth, the knighthood and the concert ticket sales what Sir Elton has accumulated over the years gives every indication that someone, somewhere, is the target market for his stamps. alas, or just how it is, that is not me, or anyone engaged in correspondence with me.



do i actually write (and subsequently send) enough letters to in any way justify or account for fretting over the qualities of the stamps i use on them? perhaps, or possibly, not. there was a time when i was a prolific letter writer, but that has all gone now. why? life, really. why, or why not? again, time, i suppose. in no particular quasi order, family, verk and all them sort of responsibilities stands in the way of being able to sit and write, or if you will compose. also, i suppose, there is a significant emphasis on immediate, "digital" communication these days, but that (and you hardly need me to tell you this) lacks the qualities of a proper letter.

in, or to, my mind, it could be said that (i suppose) to some extent writing this blog over the last, what, decade and a half has kind of replaced sending letters. some, but certainly not all, of what i write here is a bit like what i would have written and sent to people, i guess. so, if for some reason you were wondering what my letters might be like, browse around this corner of the web.



although, maybe, i should return to writing "proper". there seems to be a number of those "website" things which offer opportunities for penpals, with one or two of them even seeming to be quite legitimate and not scams. it is possible, much like the presumed readership of this blog, that someone unknown around the world would wish to hear more from me in a written, paper based, signed off way. who knows.

yes, then. once again i have managed to successfully not stick to that thing of saying that i would probably not write of Bowie at least once a month. just. oh.

well, speaking of which, in terms of my writing (not your reading), that would be that for another month. let me go and consider how best to use these smart new stamps, then, and also contemplate what to write next here.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!











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