Long live the blue mail king

In a simplified hireachy of mail bills are right at the bottom, circulars have to be next, catalogues somewhere in the middle, cheques and birthday cards near the top but unquestioably the king of mail has to be the unexpected overseas mail from a friend. It's hard to say what the best part is, the hand written address, the unusual stamp or the fact that someone has taken the time to put pen to paper. They don't come too often and there are a couple of good reasons for this, I don't know that many people who live elsewhere and I am not the most prolific letter writer. These are not excuses but I think they go some way to explaining the drought.

I came home one day and sitting on the door mat half buried lay the best letter I ever received. At first glance I thought it was junk the envelope was blue, people do not send blue letters, blue letters are for birthdays and it was no where near this time. It was only when I scooped everything up I saw the stamp, but this was, if you can believe it even better than a stamp, this was printed on the letter. On the top it said SRI LANKA POST in bold red lettering and on other end of the envolope was a picture with the text Bank of Ceylon that held no particular significance to me. I turned it over examining it like an episode of CSI. On the back was Sri Lankan text and the real give away the return address. It was not with the typically dramatic manner we have come to love and expect from the show but I had deduced the origin and sender of the post. This was no ordinary letter this was an Aerogram.

Aerograms are amazing and in the same way a monkey is similar to an ape, it's obvious they share genes but at the same time are completely different. They both contain a letter, (not the primates) have a stamp and are delivered by the mail service but that is where the similarity stops, getting an Aerogram open is an episode of CSI in itself. It is probably best described as piece of paper that after you have written your message folds up and becomes the actual envelope and is then sealed on 3 sides. With extreme caution I picked it apart. In reality there was no need the letter was fine and the monkey analogy descrided earlier is probably a better description of me examining this strange blue letter. I make no apologies for this as I think anyone else would have done just the same.

The letter itself was everything a good letter should be funny, insightful and informing. When reading letters the narration in my head is not me anymore it takes on the voice of the person who wrote it. It had been a few years since I had actually seen Marcus face to face but reading this it could have been yesterday. I often fear that an email can be misread, it is a common complaint that intination is missing and can be mistook for something unintended. I don't think this is ever a problem with letters, letters take time to be written even the quick ones, maybe it is their considered manner, their physical state or their tactile nature but you just can beat a letter.

Will I write in a few years time about the best email I ever received, I can't rule that out, but the fact that I received one just last week and it has now gone missing might be some indicator.