Amongst the flotsam and jetsam of my office is a pile of scruffy leaves of A4 paper. Contained on these pages are several hundred letters written by the 11 to 14 year olds that we have met along our route through the UK.
These letters are part of our ‘message in a bottle’ project and will be placed in sturdy capsules to be cast over the side of our container ship as it transports us across the Atlantic. The bottles will have satellite transceivers attached to them so that they can be tracked on our website as they bob above the ocean waves, left to the whim of the currents and destined for distant unknown recipients.
The letters provide a flavour of teenage life today. Lovingly folded into tiny rectangles and handed over surreptitiously at the end of lessons they offer up personal confidences. “I am popular in some way but not in the in-group with that kind of person. I bet whoever in the world is reading this, you know what I mean”.
Some make bold pronouncements about the times. “This is the age of swine flu”. Whilst others are more philosophical, “Imagine if someone finds this in 50 years. I will be 64, wow. I will be old. I wonder how the world will have changed, the things the older me will have seen”. Occasionally, they even display a vague comprehension of the lessons we have been teaching “I especially hope that our beautiful earth will not die and will be mending and getting better”.
But the most consistent theme is love. Love has conquered our project and our bottles have been appropriated as vessels of trans-Atlantic affection. Pen-friends turned suitors state their credentials in bold uninhibited terms “I have a six pack and huge muscles”. Others are meekly reflective “I think I have been in love but I am not sure anymore” or harbour homely desires “I am looking for a nice looking girl with blue eyes”.
One letter proclaims as unequivocally as a foghorn heard through a sea mist “I love Christiano Ronaldo so much. I just love him. If you are not Christiano Ronaldo please put this letter back in the water. Thank you, love x”.
TB
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Atlantic Rising 
So, I hope the team are also each going to write a letter? You can share them with us, though we dont need lonely hearts or to know about your muscles….