12th December 2013 – On Letters

The Letters Page – Make Your Own Envelope

I have, just this morning, received a letter. I’ve been awaiting its arrival for some time, and not without a certain amount of dread. It’s funny how you put your life on hold when waiting for news that you know will affect your future. My hands even shook a little as I opened it.

The contents were pretty much as I’d imagined them – not particularly good – but at least I can now get on with more important things, such as life.

(Just a thought… A letter is only important on account of its contents, unless it is written by a lover of course, or someone who has been lost, or someone who is greatly missed, someone indeed whose handwriting is immediately recognisable and the mere idiosyncratic sight of it is enough to cause a fluttering somewhere deep inside. But this letter wasn’t handwritten. It was typed. And official.)

So… In order to make myself feel better I decided to make the envelope pictured above.

The Letters Page is a newish literary journal edited by Jon McGregor and his team, based at The University of Nottingham, School of English, and it’s very good. The above envelope and the instructions to make it (but ignore those – they’re useless – the video explains further) are included in Issue 2 of the magazine, which is available to download for free by clicking on The Letters Page, highlighted in RED, or indeed, anywhere that you see the word RED. (That’s only the case for this post, I hasten to add – don’t go trawling back through a year’s worth of drivel looking for the word red just to prove me wrong!) Issue 1 is also available in Archives.

I have produced a high budget movie of my envelope-making for no reason other than it seemed like a nice thing to do today, and I felt like doing something nice.

Thrilling eh!

(This has recently been edited btw, so is even more thrilling, and no longer showcases music by Nick Cave.)

So get yourself over to The Letters Page, download the magazine, make your own envelope, curl up somewhere comfortable and read all the wonderful letters contained therein, including those by the fabulous George Saunders, the brilliant Kevin Barry and my dear and very talented friend, Ruby Cowling.