Pen Friends

What a lovely thread. Think there's been a similar one recently. At my girls grammar school in about 1960/61 we were randomly given the names and addresses of pupils at a mixed grammar school in Arras in northern France. Half of us got boys, of course. We exchanged letters half in French and half in English til he left school and I continued writing every now and then in French. I had the opportunity to visit him and his parents in 1966. Then he met and married his wife in the same year DH and I married. We holidayed in Paris and went to see them. All four of us got on and the friendship grew so much so that I was invited to be godmother to their youngest daughter. We spent many happy camping holidays with them when our DDs were young. Latterly we've been having long weekends with then every other year. Sadly he died last year when DH was recovering from surgery. DH was too ill to travel and I couldn't leave him so we didn't get to see him before he died. Thanks to a lift from his niece who is married to an Englishman, we were able to attend his funeral. He was such a lovely man, a privilege to have known him and his lovely wife and family.

I had a pen friend from New Zealand all through my teenage and early twenties years. We were both huge fans of The Monkees. She worked in London for a while, and we spoke once on the telephone. It was during this time that we lost touch. I would love to find her again, ask how her life turned out, if she achieved all she set out to do. I don't know where to start though.

Wow HillyN that is brilliant news, I'm really pleased for you and your penfriend. You'll have years of news and events to catch up on and so much to share. I must admit that I too googled Stella Lim, my old pen friend, but found no trace of her, but I'm delighted that you found yours. You've made my day!

Well, Chewbacca, thank you, what a thrilling thread this has been for me. After writing about my Swedish penfriend above and reading JackyB's comment about looking hers up recently, I got to wondering if I could track down my Swedish penfriend.
I put her name into Facebook and one came up in the same town. I just had to send a message to see if she was the same person and she replied to say she was! She was amazed because she had discovered my 50 year-old letters just 6 months ago.
She sent me her email address so I have replied and I'm hoping to hear more of what she has been doing since then.

Remember friendsreunited? I found quite a few old friends and neighbours through that website. I googled an old boyfriend recently and found his obituary!

Pen friends though - I was bad at keeping up and writing in French. I got lazy and wrote in English and my pen pal didn't write back. She lived in Champagne country which I thought so exotic.

I love getting real letters. The only people who send me real letters are the NHS and ofcourse a few birthday cards and Christmas although fewer are sending these now.
It's so nice to receive a handwritten letter. It's mostly junk mail now which goes straight in the recycle bin.

Sorry about all the typos! My excuse is small keyboard on my phone and fat fingers (and lack of editing!).

As a child I had 3 lenfriends. One in what was then called the Gold Coast (Ghana) who kept aski g me to send her things like pictures of the Queen so I got a bit fed up with her eventually. Another was a Frech girl cslled Francoise from Saintes which was arranged through school but I never met her. Her Engkish was pretty bad and I found it funny. On one occasion she said the school was closed as all the girls were hills. (Ill I suppose). Mind you my French was probably worse. She sent me what we would now call a friendship bracelet (according to GC) but she called it a Scoobidoo! This correspondence gradually petered out too.
The third was an English girl from Canvey Island who I wrote to for yeats and eventually we met as teenagers - I went to stay at her house and later she came to stay with me. We didn't really hit it off and after that we gradually stopped writing. Still it was fun having pen friends at the time!

When we first started to learn French at school(age 12) we had a magazine in French to help us. In the magazine we could write in for a French penfriend and that is how Violette and I began what has been a 51 year friendship.

We have visited each other many many times and I always felt part of her family whilst staying with her. My parents put me on a plane to Paris aged 13 and her family met me the other end (imagine that happening now!) It was an enormous learning curve but we are the best of friends. She was one of my bridesmaids in 1978 and I was her main Witness in 2016 when she eventually married later in life.

We still write, email and visit each other regularly. I write in French and she writes in English.

When my sister and I were at school, in Glasgow, in the 60’s, the school set us up with penfriends to improve our French and Spanish. We corresponded with a couple of Algerian boys, for a couple of years. Mum wasn’t keen and would warn us that one day they would turn up on our doorstep. We scoffed,
In 1971, I moved to London and went to a nightclub with a friend. She took up with a ‘French’ boy and I was left with his friend, ade idedly uncool looking fellow wearing a gold lurex suit. He walked me along Oxford Street to get my late night bus home to Hampstead. We chatted and he was impressed that I was Scottish. He told me he was on his way to Scotland, indeed to Glasgow. In the interests of maintaining conversation, I asked him where he was off to, exactly. He took out a notebook and there was my address. He had been my sister’s penfriend! I tried to put him off by saying she had left home. She was actually engaged by then. I phoned her to tell her he might be on his way. Mum, of course, said she’d told us so.
He must have believed me as he never showed up. Nice enough chap but it was such a coincidence.

In 1959 I did a student exchange holiday with Michele. We kept in touch by post for a few years but it gradually petered out. Imagine our surprise when she knocked in the door of my parents house 1986. My son opened the door as my parents had been staying with me and we were driving back to London. She was with her husband Jean Pierre (who I had met when on the exchange) and two young daughters. It was lovely catching up and although we exchanged addresses the letters gradually dropped off.

At primary school each member of our class was given a penfriend to write to from a school in Somerset. We wrote for a while, then our classes met up at the Bath and West show. All I remember is that it was extremely muddy, my wellie boot got stuck in the mud and I trod in the mud with just my sock on! She probably thought I was embarrassing and our friendship died out soon after.
At senior school we were offered Swedish penfriends. I wrote to a girl and we got on really well and when I had a tape recorder one Christmas we also sent each other tapes, as she wanted to practise understanding English and I tried to learn Swedish. She was a great fan of the Hep Stars (the so-called 'Swedish Beatles'. Later, Benny Andersson of the Hep Stars was in ABBA). One summer she wrote to say her father had to come to London on business and he was taking her with him; she asked if they could come and stay with us in Bristol. Of course we said yes! We put another bed in my room for her and redecorated the spare room for her father. At the last minute there was a train strike and they couldn't get to Bristol, so we never actually met. I think our friendship fizzled out when boyfriends came on the scene but I sometimes wonder what became of her.

I had 2 pen friends in Japan. Sadly when I left school I stopped corresponding and when I went to japan there was not response from their old addresses.

I did enjoy the correspondence, still have some of it, and regret I did not keep up with them.

I have had several penfriends,the first at school, a french girl, which didnt last long,due to the language barrier mainly, then a boy i met on a school trip to Paris,he was Irish,
I had a few American soldier penfriends. i met one who looked completely different to his photo, much slimmer and younger than he was when i met him he brought lots of presents,including a Charles an Diana commemorative cup, which i still have., he asked me to marry him, but wanted to come and live with me, in England, which worried me,in case he was trying to get away from something,but said no anyway
Also had a soldier penfriend serving in the Falklands, i had a feeling he was gay, not that it mattered, but after he left i got a huge bouquet and some Chloe perfume
I have an American penfriend at the moment who i met on a health forum, due to us having a similiar health problem, he is a bit younger and also gay, been writing to him for about 10 years now, very nice letters mainly about our love of animals, mostly cats

I have a lovely pen friend thanks to Gransnet

I had two pen friends one in Germany and one in Malta,I visited my friend in Germany and she visited us in the UK,unfortunately I lost touch with my Maltese friend which I really regret as it would be lovely to visit her while visiting Malta, but I have no idea what happened to her I have even forgotten her name, some friend I am!

We learned French at Secondary school in the 60s and our teacher arranged for us all to have French penfriends. I enjoyed hearing about my friends life on a farm in the Loire valley which was very different to my life in London, though we had similar interests. After almost a year I received a letter formally inviting me to stay with her family for 2 weeks in the summer holidays. I was so excited, but I knew my Mum would never agree to it. She didn't like anything 'foreign' and didn't see any point in me learning a foreign language. I begged her to let me go but she was adamant. Letters from my friend suddenly stopped and I never heard from her again. I discovered I wasn't the only pupil who couldn't go because of parental prejudices. Many years later my Mum confessed that she had opened my letter and wrote and told my friend that I would not be coming to visit and not to write to me again. Whatever must her family have thought of us! It was typical of my Mum to do that, and although it was well in the past then, I was still furious.

I have had several penfriends over the years but the latest is my sweetest and most precious - my 18 year old granddaughter. She writes on brightly coloured note paper (usually while enjoying a coffee in one of the many coffee shops she frequents) and pours out her hopes and dreams. I am saving her letters to show her when she is older, say 30 years old perhaps, to remind her of how she used to be and how she faced up to life’s challenges

The only time i was supposed to have a penpal was when i was at school and we were given the name of a sailor who was on the ship which the school had 'adopted'. I dutifully wrote to the sailor whose name i was given, took days to write it as I wanted it to be interesting, then waited for a reply from him which still hasn't arrived. To be honest, I don't think any of the sailors replied to any of us. Can't say I blamed them, as we were all 12 or 13 then. This was in the 40s, and things were very different in those days. Nothing very interesting to put in a letter to a grown up sailor.

I had a penpal in my late teens, we did meet but the letters eventually ceased, he actually came from a Town near where I live now.

I have 2 facebook friends who I message regularly, one I speak to everyday, we will meet at some point. I view these 2 as the technological equivalent of penpals. I still look forward to "snail mail" but I find that men especially prefer text or facebook messaging

I wonder how many of us are now googling old penfriends? I think I've found Annie, still with us despite her frequent accidents, and still in the same town. I wish I could remember Randy's surname. It wasn't Newman.

When I was a teenager I sent a letter to Radio Caroline asking for penpals. They read out my full name and address. I was inundated with letters from boys and men! I took many letters to school and gave them to my friends. I began writing to someone called Winston. I thought he was a teenager but the photos he sent me looked like they were taken 20 years earlier. I stopped writing to him! I also wrote to a boy called Dave and went to meet him at London Zoo. We had a nice day out but our letters fizzled out after meeting.

I had a penpal in my first year of senior school, she lived in Arizona and we corresponded for a while then it just fizzled out. My older sister had a pen pal in Czechoslovakia when she was about 15 - he was about 17 and wrote about the protests there and how he and his friends were taking part. He wrote to say one friend had been killed whilst protesting and then my sister had no more letters from him - we wondered if perhaps he had been arrested. Often wonder what happened to him.

I have a Japanese penfriend and have been writing to her for about 35 years now. Her English wasn’t bad when we were at school (my Japanese being non-existent!). She then went to work at Honda and they didn’t have any English speaking people working in her department so her letters became progressively more difficult to read. She had two children and when they went to school her English improved while they were learning. Now she uses the Japanese equivalent of Babelfish and her letters are often absolutely hilarious.

We swap birthday and Christmas presents (she loves Tunnock caramel logs so sent a packet over).

I love the cards she sends - beautifully made pop up or musical and so different from what we have here.

She’s now on instagram and we chat there sometimes. I’ve never met her but hoping one day to visit Japan and she says she’d love to visit Scotland. Maybe one day...

When I was about ten, I had a friend in my road called Valerie Elko. The family emigrated to Canada and we wrote for several years, then it just petered out. I'd forgotten all about it until now. Can't find her on Google.

My sister rang me on Tuesday to tell me that her penfriend of 60 years had just died. The lovely German lady had become a part of our wider family especially when my sister went to live in Germany.