THE SURFER IN the Spanish bar was in his 20s, and had spent several years working his way around the world. We were talking about how people stayed in touch when on the move. He had never received, nor sent, a hand-written letter in his life, he told me, while casually checking emails and texts on a smartphone. I found myself explaining the workings of poste restante– "post remaining" for collection – as if I was some time-traveller from the past, describing how to send a message by carrier pigeon.
In the 1980s, in my early 20s, I hitch-hiked to North Africa and then across the Sahara to Niger before cycling across West Africa. In the five months before I got back to Ireland, my only contact with friends and family – bar one budget-breaking Christmas phone call to my mother – were a handful of letters sent to post offices along the way. Otherwise, for nearly half a year there was no reliable, let alone speedy, way of getting hold of me.
Prior to email, letters sent to await your arrival were the communication norm for every traveller. You decided what towns you might be passing through, and roughly when, and then you told people which post offices to send mail to. At some point you’d turn up at the counter and ask for your letters to be handed over. Simple.
Except picking up poste restantemail was rarely simple, and often required Kafkaesque guessing games. For a start you wouldn't know how many letters to expect. Perhaps people hadn't written to you. Or they had, but the letter hadn't arrived yet. Or had arrived, but too soon and been returned to sender. There was guessing how your letters might be filed. Under your last name? Your first name? Under 'M' for Mr? In some post offices all "foreign" letters were thrown into one box and you could root through them to unearth your own mail. In others you had to make an appointment with the post master, show two forms of ID, allow him to open your post to satisfy his curiosity and then pay a release fee.
Perhaps you didn’t want to go to Goa any more, but did you still go just in case there were letters waiting? The girl you met in the south of France who promised to get in touch about meeting up; was her letter lost in the back of Seville post office? Or did she just not write? So far, all bad.
But what about the good side of poste restante?Well, there was the delicious sense of anticipation. The randomness of which letters had got through. The joy of carrying off a handful of missives to read in a cafe. The recognising of postmarks, opening envelopes, deciphering a careless scrawl. Finding coffee stains on the paper. Photographs, newspaper cuttings, feathers slipping out from between the pages.
The internet might have brought instant communication to every corner of the world, but after the sensuous if fickle pleasures of picking up letters from poste restante, emails seemed about as sexy and engaging as teleported business letters.
But poste restantestill exists wherever there's a post office. Do you know someone who's travelling? Why not write them a real pen'n' paper letter, add a few personal touches of the kind you can't send over the internet, guess which post office they'll be near in a few weeks' time and send it. Of course, then you'll have to email them to tell them where and how to pick up your letter. But it will be worth the effort because the days when a computer's "you've got mail" message sent hearts racing are gone, while getting real mail still works magic when you're travelling.