My handwriting
has deteriorated so much over the years that it now resembles the
illegible scrawl of a five-year-old.
Not a
particularly adept five-year-old at that. I’m talking about the sort of child
who seldom writes, has broken both wrists and is holding the pen in his
weak hand. Yes: that bad.
It’s very
embarrassing. Just writing a greeting card makes me self-conscious. I’ve grown
to expect the frown and narrowing of the eyes of the recipient as they do their best to decipher it; something even the people at Bletchley Park would have
struggled with.
These days, I’ll
mostly resort to block capitals, which is the writing-style-of-choice of the moron. Even
this isn’t foolproof. My capital E looks like a small 't', and my M
and W are nigh on indistinguishable.
This is what
happens when you type and text so much: you get out of practise. It’s still a shame. There was a time when I couldd write a multiple-paged essay
without worrying whether my teacher would understand it.
Maybe I was
wrong. Perhaps the only reason I got an A at English A-Level was because the
examiner thought that I’d written something else.