"orthographical banter"
Last year - I can't remember when but it was clearly hot - the writer Chris Power and I were invited onto the excellent podcast of Postcards from the Past curator Tom Jackson. You can hear it here, and can see which postcards we brought along here. According to Tom "this is a lively one", and I do appear to have a lot on my mind, but I had a lot of fun unloading it (and got a great introduction) so thank you, Tom and Chris. (I wonder if Chris has worked out by now who either Wayne or Wendy were.)
That was a really enjoyable podcast episode - made even better by acast being helpful enough to actually show us the postcards in question. Oddly enough, a random bit that stayed with me was when you mentioned how it's nice to receive an object in the mail not in an envelope (and not just because of this thing I learned from a Horrible Histories sketch). I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the idea of any random postman/mail sorter being able to read what I've written on a postcard - not that I send postcards that often, nor do they usually contain classified information - but on the other hand, they may end up accidentally providing some much needed momentary distraction to the overworked/bored postal worker. (I do realise I'm making it sound infinitely worse that it actually is - I promise that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, your post is handled without anyone sparing as much as a second glance at it, and most of the sorting is done by machine anyway.)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the downside of having worked at a mail centre is that every single piece of mail arriving intact - or, at all - does now feel like a minor miracle to me. That makes the entire experience of sending postcards quite thrilling, albeit not precisely in a good way.
Thanks for the link! (I do still decorate envelopes)
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