07:16 from Seaford

by prydwen @

Each morning I get the 7:16 from Seaford to Lewes to go to work.
This is a friendly little train full of characters either off to Brighton or on to London from Lewes.

The conversations that occur in the 17 minute journey to Lewes can border on the hysterical to the completely weird. This morning was no exception.

I recounted the story of my son, aged 11, who came home from school Monday night with his first love letter (for full story see the wifes blog 'Oh the drama' on http://madbaggagerambling.blogspot.com ). Any way he has decided to write a letter back to the girl, which involves using my computer as it is attached to a printer.

The conversation got on to the fact that kids will more likely type a letter now on a computer than sit down and use a pen and paper.
Now the group of us that travel together are of a variety of ages so looking back at our early schooldays so each of us had different recollections of what we did for our first crush, love letters.

Girls would use mum's scent to jazz a letter up, and us boys needed a way to sneekily get it to the girl of choice without the rest of the world knowing it.

But then we got onto the subject of writing, it was evident that most would have written with a fountain pen and dependant on how rich you were it was either an Osmaroid or a Parker. Then did the pen have a 'bladder' to store ink of did it have cartridges? Next did we use Quink or Parker ink? As old as some are nobody used a qwill pen!

We then talked about the note books (rough and copy) which we got from 'Woolies' which had the tables on the back. This was so you knew how many pecks to a bushal or chains in a mile. I remembered having to use a slide rule and tables as pocket calculators didn't come in until after I left school.

We all started to sound like naughty school children, funny how remembering that period in ones life can stir memories.

Funny though, getting off the train 17 minutes later at Lewes, I definately had more of a skip in my step as I trolled up the hill to the prison in the pouring rain.