For eleven years I wrote letters to my octogenarian penpal. Companionship – in all its various forms – is what Christmas is all about.
It all started in the winter of 1999, when my Mum asked me to write a letter to her old friend, Jean Burnett. Jean was an eighty year-old lady living in Somerset, and had worked briefly for my Mum as an employee of her boutique Calico Casa in the Seventies. She had no family and few friends, and on top of that was a double amputee, due to diabetes complications that had affected her mobility… Read the full story