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Paul McDermott's avatar

In days of yore, snail-mail was still HAND-DELIVERED twice a day, including Saturdays. Sunday was still respected as a Day of Rest.

I still possess and frequently use a fountain pen which I won in a Handwriting competition I entered in my final year at Primary School (1961). It is still possible to buy a bottle of ink, but I shudder at the price … o tempora, o mores!!

I wrote to pen pals (in more than one language) throughout my secondary years – with one of them I even played out a complete game of Chess by post!

Sitting on my work desk are four stuffed A4 scrapbooks with letters I have written over the years to a number of daily newspapers I and which were considered suitable for publication. One lengthy ‘chapter’ in these files are the Match reports I wrote for the local cricket team over a five year period when I was living in Denmark. Half the team were English ex-pats: you can take the man away from his cricket, but you can’t take cricket out of the man! I have to admit, however, that many of the most recent Letters were sent electronically.

Above one of the district libraries in Liverpool is a saying from Sir Francis Bacon:-

Reading maketh a Full Man

Conference a Ready man

And Writing an Exact man

This is indeed a sentiment with which I can fully concur!

Sincerely

Paul McDermott Liverpool

Sadly, my attempt[s] to enrich this letter with a modicum of Formatting [Bold, Italic, Underline] have proved unsuccessful!

However, if any member wishes to correspond by handwritten message and despite the Post Office's attempts to thwart such projects with ever-increasing postal charges, you are more than welcome to contact me by e-mail in the first instance, and we can agree to exchange post addresses

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