writing letters all week i was remembering that i used to have penpals when i was 9, up till i was about 14 or 15. they started falling away, they always do - some don't last for more than a year, they stop writing, or you do, or they move and do not tell you, or one day you outgrow them and think, no, i haven't much to say to her anymore, have i? and others i kept for 5, 6 years. the longest-lasting one, and also the person i lost touch with last, was a british girl from nottingham called emma louise copeland. maybe i should try to get in touch with her again. she would be twenty-two now. i don't know if i have the picture she sent me when we were 12, but i can remember her clearly, wearing a navy school blazer and a striped tie, and with a dark-blonde chin-length bob, and bangs cut straight across her forehead. she was one of the steadiest correspondents, and also one of the first two i had - the other was an american girl from michigan although then i didn't know where the heck michigan was - who sent me a picture of her on her farm, although that was on some level unsatisfying - although then i couldn't have said why i felt it - but it is very clear why now - it was because although she was older than i was, i was writing better than she did then. there was a girl from sydney too, melissa watson, and i tried to look her up on directory services when i was in sydney once, but we couldn't find the number. these disappeared quickly.

later i had one from south africa, ernest burton, and a boy, anders somebody from sweden who sent me a postcard of the royal family standing on a bridge and the queen was wearing, i remember, a yellowish sort of dress and gloves. (i can't remember his name or anything about him, but i remember the postcard.) one of the best penpals i had was a boy from germany, who was one year younger than me and wrote on blue checked paper and sent me pictures of him pulling funny faces with his brothers. his name escapes me, though i think it was jero or gero, if that's a german name. is it? if not i must be getting it wrong. last name, hm, was janze, i think. i remember him telling me that german is easy to learn for an english speaker, because german and english shared words, for instance, chocolate. again, i remember the chocolate and the funny faces and the blue checked paper, but not his name.

it would seem like the stuff of a novella if i were to try to trace all these people and write to them and see what they're all up to now, or if they even remember me. none of these have proved google-able, except the american girl, who still lives in michigan. and ten years is a long time, and the period between twelve to twenty-two must be one of the most changeful times. i shouldn't think they'd necessarily like it, or care to correspond, although we'd probably have something real to say now, and ten years of news, and these days emails are such good complements to letters, to maintain a correspondence. i should like to try and get in touch with emma louise, if not any of the rest.