Yay, welcome to the mailbox – i'll be writing my first letter soon but also feel free to do the first one yourself if you wish if I haven't yet! <3

Note: text transcription beneath the images




Transcription

Hello my penfriend! I'm so excited to be writing to you, and you can definitely tell that I have no idea what to write already. The last time I wrote a letter was in my Year 8 French class, where we all got paired up with a student from France, and had to write to each other in an attempt to improve our respective languages. So, aas you can probabaly expect, my topics of conversation were very much limited to the vocabulary that I had learned at that point. So hopefully writing in a language I actually know will help this time around.

Anyway what should I talk about… your art is so cool! I especially love the drawings of Bunny and Richard in your December art dump since that is exactly how I personally envisioned them to be. And then the lighting on the space deer is just incredible. Please. How is it possible for a mere human to possess this level of skill. Unless if you're just a non-human art god or something, that works too.

Also. 22 books read so far this year?? That's literally more than I read in the entirety of 2025. And I'm pretty sure I've only read two books so far in 2026. I'd love to know what books you've read so far - and also just what you like to read in general. I would love recommendations, and hopefully I'll be able to get back into reading - I definitely peaked in 2024 and things have been going downhill since then.

And I'm really bad at holding conversations, so here is me trying and failing to find a smooth way to transition from one topic to another. Yes I might be stalking your leader application to read your ‘About Me’ section. I promise I'm not actually that creepy.

ASTRONOMY AS A SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?? I wish they offered that at my school but our GCSEs are literally the most basic ones imaginable. Our least boring, run-of-the-mill GCSE is probably French. Which is sayinng something. Unless if you count Welsh, but that's mandatory in Wales. Anyway, back to astronomy - I realise I just assumed it is a GCSE so please correct me if you are doing A level/a different qualification. Anyway. WHat's the content like? What exams do you take? I am so interested (and mildly envious)!

To finish off this letter - you crochet too? What do you make? And GUITAR I need to practise my guitar but to be honest I always neglect it in favour of clarinet or piano isntead. What do you like to play/listen to?

I've said enough now, so I'll end the letter here - I look forward to hearing back from you!

- Hope <3

Side note: there are mistakes in the handwritten letter and there are probably mistakes in the transcription and both will annoy me to no end so… just ignore any grammar and spelling mistakes. Also, the scan turned out really weird on the first page and my handwriting looks like hieroglyphics so I wil try my best to make it legible next time lol.

(Note from a Seagull from the future.. goodness me i'm so sorry in advance for how much I ended up yapping!)

Dear Hope,

Hello to you too my dear penfriend! Firstly, I just need to say how absolutely gorgeous your letter is, I am STUNNED. I'm hoping I shall handwrite some of my future letters and decorate them as fabulously as you have, but for now I apologise for this very boring typed letter : ( However, I must warn you my handwriting will not be nearly as lovely as yours, it's quite questionable let's just say.
Haha yes, I too have not the greatest associations with penpal letters in regards to having to write them in different languages.. but I think that's already changing! I absolutely love this as a new swc activity, I think it's so much fun. I'm so beyond excited to get to know you more!

Ahh thank you so much!! Also… I'm assuming that means you have read The Secret History?? Ahh! Yay!! You may or may not regret ever letting onto that fact ahahaha because ever since I finished it (in December) I've honestly been well and truly obsessed with that book and have been pouncing on any innocent fellow readers to take the opportunity for yapping. Please do spill any and all of your thoughts on it!! Any theories? Favourite character or scenes? I think it was so so fascinating in terms of the characters and every event was so compelling, I want to re-read it and try to annotate it soon, to be honest. I wish I could understand more of the references!
Also, speaking of, do you have any opinions on annotating books? I think it's a slightly divisive topic.. I know some people don't like it at all, but I'm very much a book abuser with books I own (not from the library of course!), I want them to feel as read and loved as possible. I will dog-ear them, highlight in them, post-it note them, doodle and write random notes all over them, to me it makes books better lol.

Anyway, back to art. That means so much to me, I appreciate it so much, you are so sweet. I love drawing weird and/or surreal things like my snail cat and deer in space.. any suggestions for future pieces? ; ) But yes I may be a magical woodland sprite, shh though, please don't let on to anyone else.
I was wondering about your art! It's absolutely incredible too, and I want to say the most massive thank you for the PFPs last session they were so beautiful!! Do you do any other art much or ever post it? What are your favourite artsy things to do?

Yes I absolutely love reading! I mean I probably didn't need to say that haha but indeed. So far this year I have read, ahem, I need my list: Dallergut Dream Department Store, The Body Keeps The Score, Frankenstein, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Of Mice and Men, Here In the Real World, The Time Machine, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Badgerlands, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, salt slow, The Turn of the Screw, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Orbital, then 2 different short memoirs/non fiction about autistic experiences, The Book Thief, This Is Going to Hurt, Into The Silent Land - Travels in Neuropsychology, I’m Glad My Mom Died, Number Ten, Rabbitbox, and I am now currently reading “field notes from an extinction” by Eoghan Walls. I would usually probably hesitate to recommend books I haven't finished yet but I am genuinely LOVING my current book (field notes) so much it's so good!! So… I'll recommend it a hundred percent but it comes with a disclaimer the second half might randomly be terrible lmao I don't know yet! I'm sure it won't be lol.
Also I remember you've read Our Wives Under the Sea - have you read salt slow? If not, do, it's amazing. I actually maybe liked it even better, although I am a big fan of short story collections anyway.

Ooh, what are the 2 books you have read so far this year? As for recommendations, hmm.. I don't know how much my taste in books might appeal to other people to be honest but I guess I'll just say some of my favourite books I read last year: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (this has probably become my favourite book ever actually. I don't know why but it speaks to me so much. Also, any Shirley Jackson, actually, I loove her short story collection Dark Tales especially as well), Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (so sad though, oh my), Convenience Store woman by Sayaka Murata, The Moustache by Emmanuel Carrère (these two are both the genre I like to just call “Weird Little Books” and I loved them), Life of Pi by Yann Martel, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, Wild - Tales from Early Medieval Britain by Amy Jeffs, and Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova (SOOO WEIRD SO GOOD). (And of course: Our Wives Under the Sea and The Secret History but I know you've already read those haha). Whew that was hard to think.

Ooooh, ahem, time to I mean definitely not at all stalk your last leader application too. Cough.
Radiohead! I absolutely love Radiohead, I don't imagine quite as much as you haha but they're amazing – and classical music is very underappreciated too. What other kind of music do you like? Also, for tracking reading, I love and recommend using the app Storygraph, I've tried to have reading journals but failed lol, and in my opinion it's like Goodreads if it was much, much better : D

Yess! The school I am supposed to be enrolled at (but have never actually attended in the whole 1 and a half years since I was supposed to, sigh, a long story I shan't unload onto you but I've still been doing my Astronomy in my current education so yippee), actually has such cool GCSE options (and yep don't worry i’m on about GCSEs!), like Astronomy, Psychology, and Product Design, although they changed that to also include Art and Design. And hey, as a boring England-dweller I think Welsh is a very cool subject to do!! How do you find it? And what are your favourite subjects in general?
As for Astronomy, basically there are 2 papers with different content to learn for each. Paper 1 is N-ked eye astronomy, which involves stuff like lunar observation (like recognising the features of the moon's surface and such, there's all the different “seas” of the moon each with different names! I never knew before I started studying), our solar system and the earth-moon-sun system, the celestial sphere/celestial observation systems (which is so cool! It's the system of mapping out everything in the night sky with coordinates. Like latitude and longitude on the earth kind of, but as if the entire night sky was contained into another huge sphere around the earth as well, and instead of the prime meridian in Greenwich its latitude is measured from something called the First Point of Aries which I think is very cool.), star charts (like space atlases!? I love), learning the constellations, etc. Then, Paper 2 is Telescopic Astronomy and has topics like Space Exploration, Solar Astronomy, the formation of planetary systems, stellar evolution, starlight, cosmology (one of my favourite things to learn about), galaxies, etc! I really really love it but also it is quite overwhelming ngl lol I'm not too sure how well I'm going to do :,)

I'm realising I probably really need to wrap this letter soon haha, i'll try! Yes I absolutely love to crochet!! Mostly my favourite thing to make is realistic looking animals, I call it crochet taxidermy lol. I've made a barn owl, robin, raven, badger, a seagull with an egg and chick, fox, mice, rats, pipistrelle bat, sharks, whale, lobster, seahorse, jellyfish, fish, pig, capybara, lizard, ferret, and I know there's a lot more I can't currently remember. I've also made some of my own freehand creations to recreate specific pets, I made 2 custom cats, 2 custom dogs and 1 custom horse without patterns for friends c: although I make some other random bits and bobs too. What about you? What do you like to make? : D

Oh my gosh we've had experience with the exact same instruments, but for me it's the opposite – I've abandoned clarinet and piano for guitar! ^^” I did clarinet for years but if I'm completely honest with myself I kind of hated it sobs. I have no strong feelings on piano but I haven't done it for ages. Since picking up guitar though, I actually genuinely really love it so so much - I'm not very good but I've learnt quite a few songs now! I've done Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, Indygar by Adrianne Lenker, Vampire Empire by Big Thief, Zombie by The Cranberries, Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green day, The Moon Will Sing by the Crane Wives, and My Boy's Got Rabies by Robyn.210! I'm sure there's some others I'm forgetting here too but I think I need to stop writing the bible now hahaha.
What about you and your instruments?

I can't wait for your reply :]

Love, Seagull <3



(1569 words)

hey i'm so sorry this took ages - text transcription coming soon because my handwriting is illegible (it changes with the pen lol)but i need to stop procrastinating first