Happy Halloween.

Here’s a little taste of Horror for those of you who would like a scare tonight.

http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Dead-Yvonne-McEvaddy/dp/1479325422

Alice relaxed in front of a roaring fire and watched television before going to bed. She had got into her pajamas before Mark left for work and with her large warm dressing gown and fluffy slippers she curled up on the sofa, with Storm in her familiar position on her lap. She was feeling totally relaxed and able to ignore any of the sounds the house made. The creaking floorboards and howling wind no longer made her jumpy. Thinking about how jumpy she had been just one week ago made her laugh at herself. Storm, on the other hand, jumped up, growling with her hackles raised at the least little sound, needing to be soothed by Alice before she could relax again.
She let the fire go out before going out to the kitchen to make a mug of hot chocolate, Storm jumping around her feet. As she boiled the kettle and stirred some chocolate powder into the milk she found herself humming and realized that it was something she hadn’t done since that scare weeks ago. Ever since childhood she would always hum to herself while cooking, doing household chores or making a hot drink.
“The ghost stories were obviously having more of an effect on me than I realized,” she thought as she brought the hot chocolate up to bed with her.
It was her intention to get into bed and read as she drank her hot chocolate. It had been a while since she had done any reading in bed; the previous weeks had been so filled with terror that bed was where she had gone at the last minute, and then only to sleep.
Just as she was about to get under the covers her bedroom door opened and banged shut. Storm started growling, hackles raised. Alice jumped and let out a scream. Several other doors around the house opened and shut with loud bangs and Storm started barking furiously.

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Love Letters

How times have changed! Recently when my husband was away on business we kept in touch via Google hangouts, phone calls, texts and email.  But when we weren’t long going out together, when I was away on my college work experience, I used to come home from work and run to the mailbox in anticipation of those words of love flowing from the page.

In five and a half months there weren’t many phone calls. It was back in the day when it would often take a full week for a letter to get from Paris to Ireland. So by the time he got my letter telling him to be by the pay phone down the road at a certain time on a certain day, that day might have passed. Usually if I posted a letter on a Monday he would have it on Friday, but sometimes it would be the following Monday before he got it.

So even though we were eight hours apart recently with him in San Francisco and  me in Ireland, it was much easier to keep in contact than back in 1994 when I was working in Disneyland, Paris and he was here in Ireland. The time zones only had us an hour apart, but because of snail mail we may as well have been living a week apart.

I think letters are a much more romantic way of keeping in touch, and it was wonderful at the time, the anticipation, the reading and rereading, the writing of the answering letter, followed by the week-long anticipation. But could I do it again? A week without any contact from him? I don’t think so.

What do you think? Love letters versus modern technology. Please leave your comments. I would love to know – should we fight for the lost art of letter writing?

 

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