Wicked Little Letters

I went to see this film the other day. I should probably start with the health warning that some of the letters were technicolour in their content. That’s the next level above colourful.

The film starred some well-known folk like Olivia Colman, Edith Swan, Jessie Buckley and Rose Gooding.

The film was based upon a true court case in the 1920s and without giving too much of the plot away, several wicked little letters were posted around Littlehampton in England. The letters are crude, insulting, clever and demeaning. Fingers are pointed at who the author might be and.. well… the plot unfolds with a quirky bounce. It’s a jolly good romp. The good guys come out trumps whilst the right person/author is caught out and given their just deserts.

Aside from just being good fun, I was reminded again about the potency of the written word. The responsibility of those whose written words are read by many people is significant. Once written, whether on paper or a screen, they cannot be retrieved. You can’t pretend that you somehow didn’t write them. In this electronic age, it’s even more salutary because your words can be speedily sent on to countless numbers of people in the time it takes to click a computer mouse. I don’t think that there is such a thing as an anonymous email these days. That’s why we rightly employ clever, wise people in this burgeoning industry called Cybercrime.

The lesson for all those who stroke the keyboard, and especially myself is ‘Be careful.’ Read and re-read, your words before they are sent off into the cyber cosmos. Our wicked little letters are more easily found out in the 2020s than they would have been in the 1920s.