Post-box love for lonely Britons on Valentine's Day

Covent Garden on the eve of Valentine's day, 2013
Covent Garden on the eve of Valentine's day, 2013   -  Copyright  REUTERS/Andrew Winning
By Sandrine Amiel  with AFP

Thousands of big-hearted Britons have written Valentine's Day love letters this year - but not to their sweethearts.

Thousands of big-hearted Britons have written Valentine's Day love letters this year - but not to their sweethearts. The uplifting messages were left in red post-boxes and delivered to single seniors.

Red Letter Days, a gift experience company which came up with the idea, have dispatched the messages to needy elderly recipients in selected care homes on Thursday.

"I said: 'You are loved, you are appreciated, you are cherished,'" Shivanee Pattni, a 26-year-old marketing manager, told AFP after scribbling a note at a box in her central London workplace on Tuesday.

"I think it's great," she added. "It's nice that someone's thinking of them."

The scheme is being run with the help of shared-office provider WeWork, which is hosting seven of the boxes in the lobbies of some of its locations.

Ross Grieve, WeWork's community director in Britain, said the response from members had been "incredible" since the boxes first went up two weeks ago, with several left overflowing by the volume of responses.

The project also has the support of the Campaign to End Loneliness, which estimates there are nine million lonely people in Britain -- four million of them in the senior bracket.

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