The summer that I was seventeen , the sweetest time of day was 9.15 am. I would listen for the metallic clang of the letterbox as the postman pushed the day’s mail through and the scratchy thud as it landed on the door mat. There would be a slew of manila envelopes addressed to my dad, a postcard or two, and if I was lucky a blue airmail envelope with my name and address written in spiky black ink, every A crossed at the back betraying the writer’s classical education. The man I loved was far away and so I waited every morning with all the intensity that a teenager raised on WB Yeats is capable of. I would take my time opening the letter, weighing it in my hand, examining the writing of the envelope for intelligence of the writer’s state of mind. Then I would take my father’s silver paper knife and slit open the envelope revealing the treasure within. The man in question was , I see now, probably better at a distance, but then I lived for his letters. Not just for the words, I adored his regular neat hand, the greek alphas , the curly E’s, and his glorious legibility. His writing filled the blue airmail paper precisely with an even margin all the way around and a space at the bottom for exactly seven kisses. His handwriting exactly matched the man I loved, classical by training, but always leaving enough room for emotion. He complained in his letters that he had difficult reading my writing, that it would start out legible but dwindle at the end to an indecipherable scrawl. But that was the difference between us – he was well spaced and consistent, I had a tendency to leave the important things till the end.

I don’t think you can ever really know someone until you have seen their handwriting. I remember the shock of getting my first letter from a writer I admired. The contents of the letter were everything I expected and desired, but his handwriting was cramped and costive, leaning sharply to the left as if blown by an east wind. At the time I couldn’t reconcile it to the expansive, gregarious funny man I knew, or thought I knew, but as time went on I realised that his handwriting was closer to the inner man than the face he presented to the world.

I am not a graphologist and I don’t think that reading handwriting is an exact science but I do think that it is a vital part of self expression. When I am thinking clearly my handwriting is neat and legible but when I have difficult working out what I really mean then my pen sputters across the page, losing its way, my words climbing on top of each other as if hiding from the truth. Most of the time, of course, I type, but if I have to write something from the heart – a letter of condolence, an expression of friendship or love I always take out a pen. Just as a poem cannot be really experienced until you have read it aloud, an email however full of emotion, cannot have the same resonance as a handwritten page. There is now a service that offers to turn your typed text into handwriting to offer that personal touch, which is a bizarre recognition of the power of the handwritten word even if it misunderstands the meaning.

I think we prefer to type rather than use a pen, just as we like to text rather than speak on the phone: we kid ourselves that we are saving time but actually we are protecting ourselves from exposure. A handwritten letter can be read on more than one level : not just the words but the shape of the letters, the colour of the ink, the clarity of the signature. An email is a record of your words, a letter is an expression of your state of mind.

I feel pity for my daughters who wait for the ping of an email or text with the same anticipation that I waited for the postman. They will perhaps never have that understanding of their beloved that comes when someone literally shows you their hand. So if you care about self expression or you want someone to know who you really are – take up your pen and write.