(I) love letters

I moved relatively recently and i've been walking past this brightly coloured plastic box in my hallway for weeks now, but finally I think it needs a home. Before it heads into the cupboard I thought i'd share some of its contents.

Letters. My life in letters (volume 1). Letters from boys when I was at school. the kind you'd write in lessons and hand to them at the end of the day or via friends (one of you might be reading this, if you are, you and your much missed brother make even less sense 20 years later x), letters from university flatmates in the holidays, letters from a boy I probably treated quite badly when I was a teenager looking back at it now, wafer thin airmail love letters from my (ex) husband when he was doing his PhD, before we were married...

I miss letters, we're never getting that back are we? Not now we have email. If I ever have a relationship again I know I won't be adding letters to this box. I'm reading "Just Send Me Word" by Orlando Figes at the moment, I love his work and i'm seeing him talk at the Literature Festival in a week or so. Its a history of life in Soviet times, based around 3 trunks of letters between lovers, one in a Gulag, one in Moscow. Email just doesn't feel that permanent.

Also, randomly, the box contained some photos of my earliest forays into marine biology.