As with any business, there are many things I need to do each day to keep Pigeon running smoothly. Marketing, accounts, direct orders, wholesale orders, stock control, designing new Pigeons, etc.

But one of the things I regularly do, that is pretty unique to Pigeon – is writing short notes by hand.

We all write every day, but the vast majority of our writing these days is carried out on our phones, laptops and PCs. In terms of sheer volume, we probably write considerably more than any previous generation, but only a teeny-weeny fraction of it (if any!) is now written by hand.

And that’s where my first problem of the day arises – because I have a terrible ‘scrawl’. Just ask my kids. I’m not alone – in this day and age, I think this is a very common problem.

If you’re my age or older (the wrong side of 50), then I’m sure you were taught proper, cursive handwriting at school, and had to do all your homework by hand. (Unlike today, where kids have laptops, phones and even ChatGTP to help them).

But since those halcyon days were almost four decades ago (or more!), that beautiful ‘hand’ we used to have has long since become an unintelligible scrawl…

Which means that when I come to writing my little notes (they are little hand-written notes that I include in the packs of Pigeon samples that I send to shops that are interested in stocking Pigeon), I have two problems:

1   It takes me ages to write them, (I had 6 to write today, and my hand hurts!)
2   If I try and write them as quickly as I can, they are barely legible.

So today I had an idea. Maybe I could write one of them very slowly (and nicely), and then use that as a template to print some little notes with the ‘handwriting’ already on them. It would make sense – it would speed things up, make my work easier, and people might not notice the difference. All I’d have to do is write the greeting and name at the top. In terms of efficiency, it was a great idea.

(I did have a niggling thought at the back of my mind that it perhaps wasn’t such a good idea… I didn’t really like the idea of a ‘fake’ handwritten note, and it didn’t really chime with the ethos of Pigeon… But it would definitely make my life easier!)

So with this in mind, I started to write my next note. And this time I concentrated very hard, and wrote very slowly, making sure there were no unintelligible squiggles, and everything looked neat and ordered, just as if I wrote by hand all the time.

And an amazing thing happened! I absolutely loved writing it! Ridiculous as it seems, I actually enjoyed writing this note! Instead of it being just another ‘job’ to get done so I could get on to the next task, it felt like a pleasurable thing to do. Because I was concentrating so hard, I temporarily forgot about all the other things I had do, and the next note I had to write – I just concentrated on this one note, and really enjoyed forming the letters.

This was such a surprise!

It shouldn’t have been a surprise really. It’s well known that if you concentrate slowly on doing something well, you will enjoy it more than trying to rattle it off.

But it really made me stop and think. There was no way I was going to print my ‘handwritten’ notes now. On the contrary – I was going to look forward to writing them – by hand!

So there’s your solution. If you, like me, have terrible handwriting, just write slowly. It’s a solution that comes with a double joy – your writing becomes legible, and, you’ll enjoy writing more.

Over time, I might learn to write well at speed. But if I’m honest, I don’t really care if I don’t get any faster. It’s enough to enjoy the process at whatever speed.

Long live slow handwriting!

John Morse-Brown
October 2024