A middle-aged woman hoped her letter bottles would help her find a soulmate who believed in old-school romance. Unluckily, the person who wrote back told her off, and it cost her $9.
A 58-year-old woman who tossed messages in bottles into the sea hoping for romance ended up on the receiving end of a blunt rebuttal. Lorraine Forbes, who lives by the seaside in Eastbourne, East Sussex, has been sending letters in bottles for years.
I just wanted a bit of romance. It has always been a hobby of mine. It is an old-fashioned thing.
But luck wasn’t on her side when she sent one out on the back of a John Lydon gig flyer. The letter found its way to an angry trash picker. While most people who get her letters respond to let her know where her letter was found, it wasn’t the case this time.
The trash picker instead sent Forbes an anonymous angry note in a box of rocks, telling her to stop littering. The letter read:
“Please stop throwing rubbish in the sea. It goes to Pevensey Bay or Normans Bay, one day later. Many thanks, a rubbish picker.”
Forbes uses plastic bottles to send the letters, arguing that they’re safer than glass and keep her notes from getting washed away. But the picker clearly doesn’t agree with her tactic. In fact, the Eastbourne Harbor also reportedly asked Forbes to stop throwing the bottles into the sea before. “They keep trying to stop me,” she revealed.
But the angry note from the litter picker might have just finally convinced her to stop with her letter bottles. “I probably won’t keep doing it,” Forbes admitted. “This has made me realize that environmental health could find my letters with my name and address and I might get in legal trouble.” But this didn’t stop her from lashing out at the picker.
Forbes expressed her anger over the note and called the picker “cowardly” for not putting their name on the note. She also claimed that it cost her $9 to accept the trashy note, which she wants recompensated. “I will never know who the person is that sent me the letter. They refused to put their name to it. If they had I would demand that they give me my $9 back,” Forbes said.
The original letter was sent by Forbes on Sept. 5, with her name and address on the back. According to SWNS, the response arrived over a month later on Oct. 7. Previously, Forbes claims, she has received responses from as far as Holland and France. But her seaside rom com dreams have probably ended for good now.
