My old grandad liked getting letters and he liked sending letters, although he could neither read nor write.
He was over 90 years old and he lived alone in a little mining village in Derbyshire. His married daughter, my mother, lived in Leeds.
She couldn't get down to see him all that often and it was pointless writing because there was no one to read her letters to him and he wouldn't have cared to show them to anyone who wasn't family. So they worked out between them a unique way of keeping in touch.
Every Monday morning my mother used to sit down at the kitchen table with an ink-bottle and the Basildon Bond paper. As if it were the most important job in the world she would carefully address an envelope to herself. Then she would stamp it, fold it into two and place it inside another envelope which she addressed to Grandad.
She caught the first post every week. His Majesty's mail being a bit more reliable in those days, the envelope always reached Grandad on the Tuesday.
The post woman once told my mother he so much looked forward to receiving it that he would often walk to the end of the lane and wait for her coming. He would open the letter on the spot, take out its enclosure and study it for several moments as if it contained some message that only he could understand. Then he would walk across to the village post office and dispatch his stamped addressed envelope back to Leeds.
It always arrived by the first post on Wednesday and, in this way; my mother knew that he was safe and well. She never bothered to open the envelope for of course it contained nothing.This ritual went on for several years.
Sometime after Grandad's 95th birthday, my mother noticed one Wednesday morning that the postman had walked past the gate. She ran after him to see if he had forgotten her but, no – there was no letter from Grandad that week.
She put on her coat, took the next train to Chesterfield, caught the little bus to the village where he'd lived, and buried him.”