Writing by hand is becoming a lost art, but there is undeniably a personality and charm to it that one cannot impart simply by choosing an appropriate font. For the first couple of years of my relationship with my boyfriend, I would make the 300 mile journey home from my university in Plymouth to stay with my family in Doncaster for a month or so a few times a year. As we are the kind of couple that spend most of our time in each other's company, even if just sitting in companionable silence, a month was quite a long time for us to be so far away. We would talk on the phone quite often, but neither of us are really the type of person to call a friend up just to chat. About 85% of all the telephone calls I make are to organise plans for an evening or to find my friends in town or something along those lines. It's very rare for me to ring someone just to see how they are. It doesn't mean I don't care about my friends that don't live close, it's just with such a set life routine now, I rarely have any news that they won't have already gleaned from facebook and twitter, and while I can happily sit in companionable silence for hours with my friends in the room, there is no such thing as a comfortable silence on the phone. Thus, I'm not very good with phone calls that have no definable purpose.
In addition to this my family exist in some kind of technological ice age (my Mum had dial up until last year) and this was the era before smartphones, so we decided to write to each other once or twice a week. The letters would be filled with little stories and anecdotes, quite often with drawings in all the margins and sometimes including silly poems with titles like 'Ode to your Camel Eyes.' At one point I was suffering with horrible nightmares nearly every night, and my next letter had a tiny little dreamcatcher enclosed within it, which still hangs over my bed at my Nana's house today. After the first couple of years, we moved in together properly, first in Plymouth and then later moving up to Leeds, but we still have all of the letters hidden away in a drawer somewhere. They were a great comfort while were apart, an assurance that we had not been forgotten and that we were still loved. It is a shame that handwriting is fading fast in the face of today's latest technologies. It seems that the only socially acceptable ways to enjoy yourself these days all involve staring at a screen, which is a great shame, and also the reason I have been putting off buying a tablet computer or e-reader for such a long time despite my ever-decreasing amount of storage space for books and how convenient it would be for me to own one.
My own handwriting is unfortunately barely legible when I fail to write in block capitals.Through most of my teens I struggled to find a style of handwriting that thought suited me and my personality, and what you can see below is the result of me giving up and therefore devolving into a scrawl. As it turns out all my previous different styles of handwriting were all just desperate attempt for me not to write in the way that my hand and my unconscious brain clearly wanted me to. I've come to terms with my handwriting now, and interestingly enough my block capitals are almost identical to my Dad's usual handwriting style, which led him to mistakenly think he was leaving himself cryptic messages around the house that he had no memory of writing, until I disabused him of the notion. I have no idea how or why my writing has ended up so similar to my father's but I'm going to guess that the explanation for this has something to do with science.
So as part of my celebrations for today I decided to 'analyse' my handwriting using a free online guide. I generally believe that this kind of stuff is bullshit, but in the spirit of being open to new things, I'll see what it has to say. My handwriting counts as being medium in size, which supposedly indicates that I am adaptable, I fit into a crowd practical, realistic, balanced person who works well by myself or with others. So far, so bland. I am quite adaptable and practical but I'm probably more whimsical than realistic. What next? The slant of my handwriting is to the left, which means that I am socially cautious, reserved, observant and non-intrusive. As anyone with a passing acquaintance to me will tell you, this is all bullshit. I am known for being a bit blind and partially deaf, so I am quite loud and clumsy. The baseline of my writing, while not visible here on the lined paper, without guidance usually veers uncontrollably up into the top right corner of the page which means that I am hopeful and optimistic with a positive outlook at life. This is more accurate, than the previous indicator but still is very vague and unsatisfying. On balance, I still think handwriting analysis is a load of rubbish, about as accurate as those awful body language interpretations you sometimes see in celebrity magazines. Trash.
The other way in which I am going to celebrate National Handwriting Day is by writing a letter to my beloved Nana (the one who still has my dreamcatcher hanging from her ceiling.) I love my Nana very much, but I don't always find time to give her a call, and as I've said before, I'm not a very good person to chat to over the phone. So I'm going to write her a letter to let her know how I'm getting on, and how much I love her, and I'l draw little pictures in the margins and maybe even write a silly little poem, so whenever I'm not around she'll be able to look at it and know how much I care :)
Not my actual signature
Dreamcatcher http://solitarywitches.tripod.com/dreamcatcher.html
Hancock signature http://www.sd104.s-cook.k12.il.us/students/math/2ndquarter2007webdesign/dcovarrubias/DcovarrubiasPage.htm
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