The world has gone slightly more crazy since yesterday morning when I sat down to my breakfast. In twenty four hours we have seen the decline of morality in politics and worst still we are neither one thing or the other. We have no defined boundaries. We are all told to get on the web (and yes, I appreciate the irony of telling you in this medium but one must make a pact with Devil to safe the lost and reinforce the class system). We are told technology is great, mobile phones, radioactive cookers and lycra. Yet technology cannot withstand or save us from pointless meetings with inferior types who haven’t got the etiquette to print out name places or even set the table for some tiffin. The horrible thing is that most of these so called meetings can be done over the web or via the infernal contraption known as the phone. We are doomed though to spend the afternoon of summer in endless rounds of meetings without even a crumpet of scone as people (who really shouldn’t be given anything more taxing than a broom and dust bucket) point at screens full of powerpoint displays going nowhere. Then they get over excited and tell us that things are great and one spends the rest of the day phoning around the asylums trying to get them in. We then go home to the dead warmth of our television screens. There we find the news full of powerpoint presentations and foam like presenters who call each other by their first names, no respect.
So, here at the Modern Edwardians we have a simple solution, instead of upgrading, why don’t we downgrade? Switch on the radio, get out your writing slope and write a letter. Come on, when is the last time you wrote a letter? We are the Modern Edwardians write letters after breakfast and lunch, it’s the done thing. Without letters the Royal Mail has slid down the slippy slope of apathy, cutting corners and hiring temporary workers. This lack of respect for the written word is the real reason our postal service is just plain awful. Sure, we can all blame crooked owners and profit margins but we’re to blame. We have allowed our beloved Royal Mail to become the bastion of ad mongers, hawkers and fast food outlets selling credit cards to imbeciles who should be told better or given a broom and sent out into the streets to clean up (that’s for another day). Let’s claim back our Royal Mail today, tomorrow and forever, sit down and write, send a letter to a friend, a family member or your boss. Tell them you miss them, you love them, you resign (in the right order, one can’t really resign from a family or a friend – it’s not the done thing). The more letters we send, the prouder we can be of what was once the greatest service and a letter is more fun to read over a full breakfast than an email or a powerpoint presentation.
Andrew Oldham's Boneyard 