Category: Postcards

Newcastle 2

January 4, 2019

Went to the Newcastle fireworks with Sue and her family, but nature had other ideas and put on a spectacular show of her own:

It’s the only rain I’ve seen so far, and only lasted a couple of hours. I was home and slept through midnight as usual. Happy New Year!

I’ve been catching up with friends a lot: a swim in the ocean baths with K, lunch with M and a scenic drive with S:

And there’s been a bit of this:

And this:

And of course this:

Hrm… what am I painting with my Crayola watercolors?

Lazy days in Newcastle then, albeit with a lot of walking in hot, hot sun. I don’t want to push myself too hard with Tokyo on the horizon 🙂

The Year In Postcards

December 9, 2018

I traveled a lot this year and sent many postcards. Happily I received many as well, from all over the world!

As you know I have a particularly love of strange postcards, and happily sent and received many of them as well:

These are just a sample of course. I always send KLS/myself lots of cards when I travel, and between them and the ones you sent me I reckon there must have been nearly 100 arriving this year! ?

That’s a wooden card, which made it intact from Australia when I was there in January. Interestingly it only cost the same as a normal card to mail.

Speaking of stamps:

You may have not noticed, but I put a lot of effort into the stamps I put on cards. Specifically I try not to repeat stamps where possible. Watch for this the next you get cards from me. This past year it meant a massive variety of stamps and as usual Australia didn’t disappoint with their pretty and varied selection.

Of course in the name of fun I’ll sometimes repeat stamps:

This year I also took my postcard art to a new level, especially during the days in Hawaii where the hurricane shut everything down:

Many of you received original art this year as well. I hope you treasure it 🙂

Of course some of you reciprocated demonstrating talent that frankly shames mine:

Or created ‘modern art’ using other means:

No summary of 2018 in postcards could be complete without mentioning the dozen or so different Nessie’s I painted on cards sent from Scotland. It took ages but I was very happy with what I achieved…

In a few weeks I’ll be in Oz again, and then very shortly thereafter in Japan. In other words next years cards aren’t too far away. Look forward to them 🙂

The Lost Cards

September 3, 2018

Exactly three months ago today we were in Glasgow, and as usual I wrote and sent postcards from that fair city. Some of those cards featured these stamps:

These are commonly sold in tourist stores around the UK and I’ve used them before (including from many locations in England a couple of years ago). But I have since learned that these stamps are not issued by the Royal Mail (England’s official postal service) and are instead owned by a third party who has a dubious reputation when it comes to actually delivering stamped items.

If you use these stamps, apparently the items (which you put into a normal post box) are not delivered by the mail service, but are instead sent to a clearing house ran by the company that issues these stamps. They then send the collected mail in large quantities to another country with cheaper international rates, and mail it from there. According to what I’ve read these countries are usually in SE Asia, and there are significant delays as a result.

As far as I know only one Glasgow postcard using these stamps (and I believe I sent 10) has arrived – to my parents in Oz. The rest of us are waiting, but since it’s been three months I’m starting to wonder if we’ll wait forever…

I once sent my parents a card from Scarborough, England that took over 6 months to arrive but that used Royal Mail. I fear these Glaswegian cards are forgotten in a box somewhere, or perhaps experienced a grimmer fate.

The lesson is: in the UK, no matter how pretty the alternative, only use Royal Mail stamps (look for the queens head on the stamp). Even if your cards do arrive using these imposter stamps, they will likely be long-delayed!

Robot Claw