Penmanship...

So a few weekends ago I was at the wedding of Mr. & Mrs. P&M D in Manchester, gorgeous wedding, beautiful bride and the sun was shining in full force, the sky was blue and clear!

Invariably at these occasions, the time came when the Guestbook made its way around. Then came the discussion of 'who gets to write in it'... Mr T said that Ms D had the honour on their behalf because she has pretty writing.. the mister said I had to write our message because I have much neater writing than he..

Which got me to thinking.. why is it that girls (almost always) have much neater and "prettier" if not just more legible writing!!?? Seriously.. as a secretary/ admin assistant/ exec assistant/ receptionist.. I have worked with many misters and misses and as a general rule, ladies always write far more legibly than gentlemen...

But I have also noticed in recent times, that my own penmanship is getting worse, potentially due to the fact that I rarely write things down anymore... I do most of my correspondence over email and/or facebook and if not over the internet, most often by text message... I am not much of a phone person... I used to be.. in high school I spent countless hours blethering on the phone to friends.. often into the wee hours of the night, whispering under the covers to avoid getting yelled at by my parentals to go to sleep!

I'm not sure when I stopped being a phone person, but apparently I'm just not... I often see other friends on ye old facebook arranging to skype each other and wonder why noone ever wants to skype with me?? Then when I eventually DO get requests for skype dates, it's often during times when I can't make it.. :(  The last decent phone conversation I had with anyone was a) with mother - which was at least a couple of months ago and b) with Ms Sok when she lived in Doha and was arranging to come visit me in Edinburgh, and THAT was sometime in 2009!! Tho I did have a brief skype with Mr J last week for about half an hour...

I digress! With a lovely Hallmark Holiday just been and plenty of friends getting engaged (seriously, I've had 4 sets of friends announce engagements since New Year), there have been many cards to write  scribble in make a mess of .. I made such a mess in fact, of two cards, I ended up typing my message, printing it out, and sticking it into the cards instead...

Now, maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to card writing... but when people send me cards, they are things I keep* and treasure.. and I know this isn't most people's approach to cards.. but I like to think that some of my cards are kept so I like them to look neat and tidy.. (same with present wrapping, even though I know it's going to get ripped and destroyed, I still need to make it neat and tidy).. but I got to thinking... when did my handwriting start getting so bad???

Ugh!! Do people just not take pride in their (physical) writing anymore?? Or are we all just out of practice?? When I've asked my friends, most of them say, the last time they had to sit down and physically write something (more than just a quick note etc) was probably at school.. 3 hour long English exams anyone?? Where you wrote till you hand cramped, then you wrote some more??!!  - Maybe that's why we don't write anymore?? We're all traumatised!!

What do you think of YOUR handwriting???


*as in, when I had to clear up and pack the contents of my parent's house (after I finished univeristy) I found birthday and Christmas cards which I'd received in PRIMARY SCHOOL!! no joke!! Some of them, I don't even remember who the people ARE anymore.. but some of them.. a card in the shape of an english sheepdog (they had one as a pet), given to me by my BFF at the time Emma, really made me smile.. I still have that card, it's in storage now, but I've kept it.. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.. you could say I'm a little bit of a hoarder!!