Covert Operation

Some of you were asking after another post, so here it is. It probably won't be what you were waiting for though.

In my loft is an old suitcase that belonged to my grandad until he died. It's been ours for years now, but it's not the suitcase that interests me (for good reason - it's falling apart and smells a bit weird). No, it's the contents that I want to get my hands on.

It contains several relics from my grandad's days as a soldier - medals, an army mug, a knife he bought at a bazaar, stuff like that. What I really want to look at though is the probably hundreds of letters sent between him and my grandmother during the '40s and maybe early '50s. This was back in the days when local mail was delivered 3 times a day, so my grandparents, particularly my grandad, seem to have taken the opportunity to send mail 3 times a day and run amok. This was over a few years, so the letters have built up a bit.

Now, my grandad was no poet, but the love he has for my grandmother is so obvious in these letters, and so pure, it enough to make you cry.

Unfortunately I have only had the chance to read one or two as my mum is adamant that they are private letters and should be left well alone. I'm wise enough to leave well alone and not point out that the letters were written 60 years ago, both subjects of these letters have been dead for about 6 years, and that they likely would not have minded us reading them even when they were alive.

However they have too big a pull on my mind. The romantic in me wants to pick up tips, the genealogist in me wants to search for clues about their lives, the archivist in me wants to put them all in chronological order (they're all mixed up right now).

And tomorrow everyone but my brother goes on holiday for a week. A week of evenings in which nobody will be any the wiser. Except, now, the whole of the internet. But you won't tell anyone, will you Internet?

It may seem like a particularly sad and nerdy waste of an evening, but I'm not likely to get a chance like this for another year or more, so I'm taking the opportunity by the horns. Or by the 50+ year old suitcase.

If I find a really good one, maybe I'll even type it up for the blog.

Blogged to the sound of Forever Faithless, Faithless.