ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH BERRY
While you won’t find any majestically old books on my shelves, personal treasures do occasionally materialise, like the notecard that swooped from a slim hardback the other evening. It was embossed with its sender’s name-just as well, since who among us can identify even our closest confidantes by penmanship alone in the age of the instant message?
This six-line missive must have been sitting there for years. It was a rare material reminder of a heady romance that mellowed into precious friendship and, three lockdowns later, feels a lifetime ago. Yes, I’ve texts aplenty-emails, too-but were I to print them all off, their heft couldn’t match the tactile intimacy of pen and ink, nor its time-travelling, multisensory immediacy