Fuzzy pictures, fuzzy feelings

They don't write 'em like that any more, do they..?

I don’t want to imply that I’m some sort of tough guy, but I didn’t even sniffle when Jack slipped into the icy depths at the end of “Titanic”.

There was no lip-trembling when Bambi’s mum died either. Excluding the time I realised I’d run out of coffee and the shop was shut, I’ve avoided tears for some considerable time. A story from America tested my resolve this week, though.

A chap called Matt, from St. Louis in Missouri, sold a VHS player on eBay. (Don’t laugh – we only got rid of ours last year.) His old-school tech sale received a similarly vintage-format response from the buyer, in the form of a letter through the post.

It came from an 86 year old man In Phoenix, Arizona, who praised Matt for “your care, your efforts, and your promptness”. Wow –someone actually thanking someone for something. That’s got me pretty emotional already.

The old chap’s story is so much more than that though. Having found a pile of old VHS cassettes, he purchased the player and caught up on what the magnetic-tapes had held safely for years. There was his retirement party from a quarter of a century ago, prompting the comment “Jeez, were we young”, that he’d never seen.

But there were also recordings of his wedding, and if you weren’t starting to feel a little teary yet, his observation in the letter mentioned “the family and friends, many of which are no longer around”.

He went on to mention holidays, travels “and most importantly the gentle maturing of my family” captured in the video footage, and that each was “more fun than the last” to watch.

By way of a thoroughly modern response, Matt posted the letter on Reddit, where it was upvoted 160,000 times in a day. Subsequently shared on twitter, it’s had over 300,000 likes in just two days.

Matt is going to frame the letter, and has generously offered to digitise the tapes for the VHS veteran, so he, and his family, can enjoy the memories safe in the knowledge that the passage of time won’t gradually erase them.

 Oh dear. I’ve definitely got something in my eyes now. In a world of streaming and emails, it’s lovely that some spools of tape from decades ago, and a letter through the post, can deliver the warmth that digital sometimes lacks.

Analogue loveliness.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 22nd of February 2019. The version used on the paper's website was re-titled as "I didn't cry at Titanic - but this story about a VHS player brought a tear or two".

We got rid of our VHS player last year when we moved house. Arguably, our DVD player could go the same way - we've been here nearly a year, and haven't used it yet. I've got loads of DVDs, but many of them are still in the shrink-wrap, as there's so much to watch/record on TV, and so little time to actually watch it!

(Tape Time: No 75 just died, but 76 is going strong, featuring a taped-off-the-tv episode of Top Of The Pops from 35 years ago, on 09/02/84.)