Love Letters

 

His Nibs and I watched a documentary tonight, about Mallory, the famous climber who tried to climb Everest in the 1920’s, but died in the attempt.  Nobody knows for sure whether he made it to the top or not but two climbers who’ve done the same thing with the same equipment as George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine would have had, succeeded a couple of years ago.

George Mallory’ body was found on Everest a few years ago, and the only thing missing from his belongings was a photo of his wife, which he’d promised to leave at the summit of the mountain if he made it to the top.

Mallory was in a very happy marriage, and the whole documentary was peppered with quotations from letters he and his wife wrote to each other during the expedition.

The documentary led me to start thinking about love letters, and His Nibs to start wondering whether he should climb Everest, just “because it’s there” – as Mallory himself said.

I’ve never had a proper love letter.  Certainly nothing like the ones the couple on this documentary were writing to each other, swearing undying love, and going on about staring up Mount Everest and thinking it’s the second most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Of course, these days, there’s no real letters anymore, is there? I write the odd one, actually, because I think it’s a lovely thing to get. I even have fancy matching paper and envelopes to write them on. I think a personal letter sends a bit of a message, that I’ve bothered my barney to sit down and write down my interminable ramblings, been a grown up and bought a stamp, and generally gone to a little bit of bother. I seem to be alone in that though.

I can’t remember the last time I got a personal letter.

We've had the opportunities for love letters in our house.  Plenty of opportunities, in fact.  His Nibs has been allowed off on numerous little adventures unaccompanied, some of them up to three weeks long.  I’m pretty cool that way.  Especially if he’s blathering on about going somewhere I have no interest in.  I just say that I want him to do all the things he wants to do in life, and that he should go.  He never puts up much argument.

Anyway, in the days when His Nibs is far from home, I invariably ask him to email me to let me know he’s safe.  I know his limits.  There’s absolutely no question of him writing a letter. So I only ask for emails. 

He always mutters a promise that he’ll forget before he gets to the front door, so I make him stop what he’s doing, which is usually packing or looking for his passport or something.  I make him stare me in the face and take me seriously.  I ask him to commit himself to long emails letting me know everything that’s going on, and how much he misses me. 

And he does email, when he has to, about once every four days.  And the mails are never more than a line and a half long.  They usually just say that he’s having a great time, and that he misses me and the dogs.  All of us, as a threesome.  Nothing directed at just me at all.

Then at the last minute he sends me a long and complicated mail with full details of his flight home, in order that I can collect him at the airport.

I’m no better.  I try to mail him messages of love and longing, but I always lose focus in the middle of them.  So they usually read something like “I wake up every morning thinking of you…..and irritated beyond reason because the tap in the bathroom is still dripping, you HAVE to fix that.”

Or maybe “everything is really boring without you.  Well, not everything, the cooker blew up yesterday, which was quite exciting, and I’ve had to put a new one on the credit card, so don’t use yours too much over there.”

Not exactly the stuff of wine and roses, is it?

Maybe the day of the love letter is over forever.  I think it’s a shame though.  Instead of pages of beautiful script on vellum paper, blotty with fountain pen ink, we now get texts arranging to meet up, and that’s on a good day.

Maybe there should be an International Letter Day, when everyone has to write a one page letter to one other person, full of niceness and warmth and no giving out?  Will we start a campaign?