Week 9: Searching for Lisa

Let me tell you a story about an old pen pal

Week 9. About four years ago, I moved out of my family home. Some say a little late in my life but hey, we're all on different paths in life and you don't need follow the well trodden path of life. Every time I visit home, which thankfully isn't far from me, my parents would often say, are you going to take the rest of your stuff today? Often my reply would be... what else is there to take? In truth, there is a fair amount. We then realise how much stuff we have accumulated over the years, which is fair, when we have lived a few years. Some things I often never chucked out or recycled because, ha, perhaps one day we'll need it again, like an old iPod, an old cd, a poster or art work from my a-levels.

Here's where it gets interesting, the other day, it was a Sunday, I popped over to drop something around their house and often, I'll stay for dinner because of course, there is nothing better than mum's food. I went upstairs to look for my sister's old recorder. Instead of finding a recorder, I found a small a5 black plastic bag. Initially, it just looked like an old bag of leaflets and business cards that I had collected, but it was filled with a load of old letters.

Intrigued by this discovery, I open up a few of the letters and realised it was from my old pen pal. Her name was Lisa, she was of Chinese origin and she lived in Liverpool. In the mid 90s, I was a subscriber to the Liverpool Football Club magazine. In there they had a pen pal page, where you can write in and become pen pals with someone. Lisa was my pen pal. I was amazed, excited and intrigued by the letters.

After dinner, I headed home and sat in my pyjama's, ready for bed, reading the letters. There was about 7 letters. It was 1997, Take That were thee band of the time. Lisa was a huge fan of Take That (as was my sister), especially Mark Owen, from what I remember, everyone was a fan of his. He was a good looking fella. In the letters, we talked the troubles we were having at school, boyfriends, girlfriends, our friends, what we're doing over the next few weeks and what subjects we enjoyed. The letters were written on different papers and sizes. One of the letters, she had drawn herself because we both wondered what each other looked like. This was way before mobile phones so not easy to just take a quick snap and send over via email. Now that makes me feel old. We then both shared a drawing we had both done, I sent a drawing I had done of Jamie Redknapp, a top Liverpool footballer in those days and she sent a drawing she had done of a tree.

27 years later, I am wondering where Lisa is, what she is up to, how she is doing and whether she'd remember me. Is she still in Liverpool? The last letter I had, she mentioned she's excited to do her fashion design course in Hong Kong. This might be a long shot but I'm going to see if I find her.

Watch this space.

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