There's a Frankenstein's Monster of a dresser in our bedroom which we bought from IKEA the day we moved to Boston in 2006 - when we got it home we found out that they had given us two boxes full of completely different non-matching bits. I still remember the exact words of every pre-recorded hold message on their customer service line as I made countless phone calls to try to get them to send us the correct parts, and we gave up when we had an article that almost fit together with all the drawers nearly operable and able to hold clothes.

Since then it's been gradually falling to pieces, saved only by various nails, screws and bits of wood from the remaining mismatched parts rammed into it at odd angles in a desperate bid to prevent it splitting apart and collapsing into a tragic heap of splinters and underpants. Very soon, though, we're finally planning to replace it with a dresser that was actually put together correctly - and as we moved some clothes out of the more undead drawers, we rediscovered a secret in the form of a stash of letters that I had sent to Whitney during our long-distance Scotland to California relationship.

I remember that I was extraordinarily bad at sending these items of comfort, having to be coerced into doing so from the start because I couldn't see how they were different from the always-on instant messages that we were exchanging (with Skype being in its infancy, supporting voice-only calls that worked about half the time). In every single one, I would tend to do something distressingly similar to my approach to coursework and just switch my brain to ramble on for as long as it took to fill up the required space. This meant that I would invariably apologize for not really knowing what to write about, note how appalling my handwriting was (because these were the only thing I ever hand-wrote, apart from exam papers) and then talk about looking forward to seeing each other again. Having run out of material, I would then use any remaining space at the bottom to draw my sort of alien language doodles, which Whitney did her best to pretend she gave a toss about.

Of particular note, though, are the articles of extraordinary garbage that I somehow thought fit to include with my correspondence. This is the girl who was sending me beautifully papercrafted cards and letters just to make my day better - and I was horrified to read myself reciprocating with such artefacts as a half-used bus ticket with a remaining value of $8.05 in San Francisco, and the latest discount catalogue that LIDL had shoved through our letterbox. (For the last one, the accompanying letter described my dealing with the I-138 immigration form, so I think it's reasonable to assume that I had just gone mad.)

Despite being under extremely keen competition, one note in particular apologized for being "the worst letter ever" at the end. I dread to think what I must have put into that one - an invoice for my gas bill?