I got a reply from my former teacher! It really gladdened me to get home on a Friday evening, in the dark, with the rain sheeting as Pacific storms are wont to do, and find a letter postmarked “Exeter & Devon” and addressed to me in familiar, tiny, reverse-side-of-the-fountain-pen-nib scrawl.
I’m feeling all warm inside now with good memories and the joy of a friendship and correspondence rekindled. And in the kind of coincidence that the universe seems to throw ones way remarkably often, he related to me that just before Xmas he’d been at a party where he met a contemporary and friend of mine of old, and had asked after me.