I cannot imagine the unearthly pleasure of receiving a handwritten letter in the post. Chiefly unimaginable is the timeline of reply. One could languish freely for days, weeks, months—even years—before putting ink to paper. In the digital age, one feels duty-bound to respond to an endless stream of pings and zings and bleeps and blurps. Worse yet is the apology for replying ‘late.’ Modern etiquette demands obedience. Delayed replies are now treated as small betrayals. But who will time the timekeepers?
What pleasure they must have had back in the paper age. Imagine disappearing for weeks on end with no obligation but your own conscience.
What freedom.
Back then, a letter was a serious exercise in communication. First, you thought about what to write. You wrote it down, careful to avoid those linguistic landmines—unspellable words like ‘accommodation’ and ‘initially.’ Then you sauntered down to the post office, bought a stamp, licked and pressed it into the corner of the envelope. What followed was an intricate marvel of logistical music. The clerk, invariably and reassuringly stuffy, dropped the letter into the box and shot you a disapproving glance. “Fuck off, then,” said her eyes. Mortals are forbidden from observing the rest of the symphony.
The postman would scoop up the sack of letters and fling it onto a truck. The driver would scoot off to the sorting office, where calloused hands—obscenely more useful than those that wrote the letter—would launch the sacks into ever-more useful sets of hands. By some bureaucratic wizardry, your letter flitted between countless pairs of fingers, all united in one sacred mission: to get your letter into the hands of another mortal.
As a seven-year-old boy, I learned that many across this island routinely played a game called The Confetti Game. My father was a storied, record-breaking contestant.
Every morning, I observed the ritual. The letters would hit the mat. My father, a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger in his hand, would eye the pile like a Victorian botanist studying an orchid. We categorised the letters by colour and font. The ones stamped in standard black ink and sober fonts were opened and, usually, filed. The ones splashed in tabloid red and marked with sinister commands—DO NOT IGNORE, FINAL NOTICE—were stacked into their own teetering tower.
On my father’s face: a boyish grin. He swiped the offensive letters open with the dagger.
“You see, Christopher. We’re playing a game.”
“What game?”
“Well, people send each other letters, and the best ones get turned into confetti. It’s called the Confetti Game.”
“But why?”
My father said Great Britain was teeming with tactile characters who sent letters to strangers for the sheer methodical pleasure of sending letters.
“But only you and I know about this game…”
“It’s a secret…”
“Yes!” he pounced. “It’s a secret.”
“Like when you were in the army?”
“Exactly.”
My old man held up a letter draped in declarative sentences and all caps.
“These letters—the red ink ones—they go straight in here.”
He fed it into the shredder. Ribbons of blood-flecked paper spooled into its transparent belly.
Admittedly, I had my doubts. But upstairs in the attic were boxes of army fatigues, riot gloves, and sepia photographs. Sometimes, for fun, my father would sprinkle a mysterious powder onto the fire. We’d take cover as the dust exploded into sparks. I believed everything this colossus said.
I suppose much of his neurotic, rule-loathing zeal came from having spent a lifetime running from his father—a stiff, well-to-do WASP-type who believed in fountain pens, rules, and consequences. My father believed in none of the cherished beliefs of the English upper-middle class. Not one word of it. A once hugely promising sculptor, my father knew the cost of compliance—the steady erosion of his artistic soul. In his own little proxy war, he wasn’t paying this fine, that fine or any fine, for that matter.
This ritual animated my days. I’d go to sleep dreaming of tomorrow’s edition of the Confetti Game and wake up thinking about the same thing.
One morning, an ominous man dressed in overalls, with a gigantic spanner in his paw, clipped a cable to my father’s clapped-out Volvo.
“Dad… What’s that man doing with your car?”
“Oh,” he said. “This here’s my friend. He plays the game too.”
“He does?”
Sensing a heart beating somewhere in his chest, the gentleman said, in a West Midlands brogue:
“Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m… what it is. It’s part of the game. Your daddy here’s lending me the car. I’m bringing it back soon. Don’t you worry, young man.”
The Volvo skulked down the road and out of view.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t long before my father made similar promises. It’s been thirty years. He should be back any moment now.
Rebellion runs hot in the blood, I suppose, diluting with each generation. My great uncle Eric, along with a ragtag crew of saboteurs, once blew up 450,000 gallons of fuel belonging to one Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the ‘desert fox’ of the Afrika Korps.
During WWII, Eric served in Popski’s Private Army—a rogue band of misfits and madmen who wore what they liked, saluted no-one, and never said ‘sir’ to a commanding officer. Popski didn’t want obedient drones. He wanted the wrong kind for the right job. Uncle Eric fought fascism with sabotage. My father fought bureaucracy with a paper shredder. And I fight parking enforcement officers with Jesuitical delay tactics. Apples and trees, etcetera.
To this day, I treat letters, emails, and messages with the same privileged eye. Recently, a letter slapped the mat: a parking fine. I had two weeks to reply before the council doubled the penalty. I set a reminder on my phone to reply just minutes before the deadline. For weeks, I watched the seconds dissolve.
I was the master of my time—not some panjandrum from the council.
On the stroke of the deadline, I exercised my legal right to be a nit-picking bastard.
“That’s not my registration number.”
Weeks later, they jabbed back:
Dear Mr Gage, as you can see from the photograph, the registration plate on the offending vehicle matches that of your vehicle.
Ah, I replied. You might be right.
I feinted:
The ticket machine wasn’t working that day. I cannot be held at fault for that.
Weeks passed. The council sent a thick document of evidence detailing the transactions made by the machine that day.
Fair enough, I replied. But—and this is true, by the way—the car park is littered with signs saying parking free here every Saturday.
They replied:
Yes. That is correct. But the signs also specify the dates that scheme ended.
By now, I had easily consumed weeks of man-hours in splitting hairs with faceless assailants I imagined being unreasonably invested in my total annihilation.
Ah, I replied. But the dates were obscured by a well-placed birdshit.
By now, the poor sod assigned to pursue the fine must have taken sick leave due to a nervous breakdown.
Another letter arrived:
Dear Mr Gage,
During our extensive correspondence, we have accepted that you made a genuine mistake in parking your car in the area aforementioned without paying the requisite charge.
As a gesture of goodwill, we hereby waive the penalty notice. But we do ask, in future, that you get in touch if there is a problem.
After thirty years, I guess I am still my father’s son.
I still correspond by written letter with two old friends - receiving their replies is wonderful! I settle down with a cup of tea to decipher their beautiful but often illegible cursive - then read, savour and enjoy!
Wow, you fought City Hall and won!
My hat off to you, good sir! Well played...very well played!