Teenager leaves ‘lovely letters’ around Bury St Edmunds

A kind-hearted teenager has been leaving positive notes and letters of encouragement around Bury St Edmunds.

Emily Mason, 18, from Plovers Way, Bury, started hiding notes around King Edward VI School on the run-up to her A Level exams to give her fellow students a pick-me-up while they revised.

Since completing her studies, Emily has extended the reach of her memos, sticking them to lamp posts, traffic lights and bus stops along Cullen Road and around the Nowton Estate. So far she has posted around 20 letters.

Emily’s notes have been a big hit in the community, with some residents, cheered by her kind words, even posting replies.

Emily said: “The notes I left around school were telling people to not give up on their revision, not to doubt themselves and to keep trying.

“I left them between books and near the printers.

“Around the community I was telling people to do what makes them happy and not to let people interfere with what you feel is right for you - not to give up and to stay positive.”

Emily said she was inspired to write the notes after reading Jodi Ann Bickley’s ‘One Million Lovely Letters’.

“It is about a woman diagnosed with a long term illness when she was young, around 20. She was told she was going to be housebound so she decided rather than be depressed about it, she would start to write letters to pass them time and just put them round her town randomly.

“Her book is about the different stories of people she helped - people going through a divorce, going through cancer, struggling with exams.

“It is a really good book and I just thought, what a cool idea.”

Emily said she was pleased at the reaction her letters had received and loved that people had written her back.

“I would like to say thank you so much for their lovely kind words,” she said

Emily is looking to study environmental science at University of East Anglia in Norwich and plans to leave encouraging notes around the city and campus too.