King Canute, Papa and the letters to Canada

My granddad writes one letter a week to his sister in Canada,  it takes five days for the letter to get to her, and her reply  takes  five days to make it to ‘Papa’ in Hove.

The letters are always warm and funny and you get the sense despite the fact they’re thousands of miles away, and certainly haven’t lived in the same house for more than 70 years,  that they’re talking to each other across the bedroom they shared with their many other siblings all those years ago.

Many times I’ve tried to convince Papa that he should get online so he would be able to ‘talk’ to his sister, his children, grand kids and great grandchildren in ‘real’ time, but he wont be convinced and seemingly his justification is that he doesn’t understand ‘them’ (computers that is).

The internet enables instant and in many cases, free communication whether it is through email, messaging or Skype, the technology doesn’t need to be understood, it just needs to be used, and how many of us understand the internal combustion engine when we start our cars in the morning?

As I do my work it’s been really fantastic to see so many people of my Granddad’s age grabbing the bull by the horns and communicating with their children and grandchildren on their ‘level’.

Unfortunately it’s a sign of the times that people don’t have or won’t put in the time to write letters or pick up the phone to friends and relations. However people have an inordinate amount of time to send emails and texts.

Although not ideal and it would be easy to bemoan the ‘death’ of the letter, lets not swim against the tide or try and stop the waves of progress like modern day Canute’s  if you can’t beat them…. join them.

To contact Richard at PC Skills on Wheels call 07738 939321

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