Day 8. Where are we now?

Special memories are held in this little wooden box

Today, David Bowie very quietly launched his first single for 10 years, marking his 66th birthday in a surprising way and creating a frenzy of social media commentary. So far the response has been mixed, not least of all perhaps because of the bizarre video that accompanies the track, with Bowie and his unknown companion both reminiscent of the bear from Bo' Selecta. However I'm with music journo Neil McCormick who describes it as "a small, perfectly formed, poetic song, that doesn't quite yield its mysteries and leaves you longing for more." The album is due for release later in the year and I can only hope that as well as seeing Muse and Paul Weller in 2013, that I'll also be adding Bowie to my gig list (let's forget about One Direction - please).

I could write about David Bowie all day; so many Bowie songs provide the soundtrack to significant moments in my life, but I'll focus instead on this.

On this day last year, and again today, Letters of Note, one of my favourite websites, published letters written by David Bowie; one to Bob Grace, the guy at Chrysalis Records who had just signed him to the label and the other, a reply to one of his first pieces of U.S. fan mail. This got me thinking about the fact that for most of us it's increasingly rare to receive handwritten post so I dug out some of the special letters I've received in the past. Memories sparked simply by seeing distinctive handwriting on tattered envelopes: my Mum's feminine script, a friend's precise block writing. I can't imagine keeping emails in the same way, and tweets and Facebook posts will be lost in the digital ether. I'm going to take inspiration from this and write a letter to my Mum; like me she loves to get post.