Envelopes - Days Gone By

Eeh, a day behind - yesterday's theme, though I sketched it last night. Personal envelopes (not the kind with little windows unfortunately) are becoming a rare sight, all covered with stamps, handwriting and postmarks.
I used to check my letterbox almost as often as I now check my emails, as one of the many South Africans with many or most of their family and old friends living elsewhere in the world. In fact sit in front of and stare at it - willing one of those crisp, fat packages of news and connectivity to plop through the slot from loved ones. Little gifts, when you consider all that went into writing, stamping, and posting them, sometimes enclosing drawings or children's scribbles, compared to dashing off a few lines in an email or dialing up on Skype. Which is fantastic and miraculous, make no mistake, but just not the same. These are from my three sisters - one sadly no longer with us - from different parts of the world, I wish I'd kept more of them. I think I'll make a new family law that says we have to write each other one real humdinger of a letter a year, except I'll probably be the first to break it. (BTW the address on the top one is obsolete so you won't reach me there if you're thinking of writing:)

An exciting white slip did arrive this week in our rusty old disused letterbox. To collect a parcel from the P.O. which turned out to be packs of postcards from images published in The Art of Urban Sketching. 100 each of three of mine, and a wonderful collection of a hundred of the other participating urban sketcher's works which I'm really thrilled to have and keep - not sending those, but postcard, anyone?