I do like to use greetings cards to start letters to my penpals... I buy many from charities, and usually they are all lovely. So, when I went into one charity shop last month and saw these nice cards, I bought them straight away...
I started a letter on Sunday on the hedgehog card, wrote a couple of paragraphs and then thought, there's an odd smell. It was the card. On the back of the card, it says that it is 100% recycled, and Carbon Balanced Paper, Vegetable based ink, Alcohol-free print, Powered by green energy.... eco-friendly... I continues writing, left the card open overnight... a slight decrease in the smell... I didn't feel like rewriting - the design was mentioned in the letter, so using a new/different card would have meant having to totally change some of the letter. I don't know if it was wise, but I wrapped the card up in clingfilm in the hope it contains the smell, but left the additional pages of the letter written on non-scented paper outside of the wrapping. It got posted today.. I'm annoyed at myself with hindsight for it...I should have started it again, but was tired and behind on writing replies to letters, so let it slip.
I usually don't mind the smell of freshly published stuff... a mail order catalogue received in the post, a new book... but I was in a well-known bookshop chain earlier this month and picked up The Correspondent. I had to put it back down because of the publishing stench. A shame as I've heard good things about the book (I know I could get the ebook, but...).
