I’ve been handing out my new business card to old penpals and new, with my new address. Of course, I quite failed to realise that I had included the wrong postcode. One eagle-eyed penpal of mine pointed it out. And then I thought to myself, well, I’ve included my url on the card, but it has been a while since I posted. If anyone took a look, they would wonder where I had gone to. Well, the short answer is, writing letters of course!

I have been writing to a fair number of new penpals lately. I made a raid on a batch of friendship books and sent off a lot of spec letters. And a lot of them were replied to. Also, I’ve recently renewed my membership of International Pen Friends. I was not going to do that; the reply rate of IFP is, in my experience, very poor. Out of a list of 15, I am safe to get replies from less than half. And of the list I received last year, I am still writing to just five of them. But always the optimist, I thought I would try again.