Last year I got myself a PO Box and started asking Internet strangers to send me a postcard, if they liked, rather than plain old email and contact forms. Since then, I’ve enjoyed an occasional surprise “postcard from the Internet”, and I’ve been collecting them on a page of their own.
It was extra-surprising to receive a postcard from an in-real-life friend: somebody who knew my actual address1!
Ele and I met back in the early 2000s when she started studying at Aberystwyth, and we quickly hit it off over a shared love of terrible movies. She moved away from the area to find work, but we’d still see each other from time to time.
She drew some breasts for me at my thirtieth birthday, for example… which I’ll stress isn’t how she got appointed official Christmas Card artist of my nonprofit Three Rings, that same year, but it looks like a weird coincidence whether I point it out or not so I might as well own it.
I haven’t seen her in person since… 2022, I think? She came to my summer party that year… right before she emigrated to the other side of the world! We still keep in contact through other means, but it’s not quite the same.
Anyway: it was a delightful surprise to receive this (Yyou can read the full text in its entry on my postcards page). Technology may make the world feel smaller and us all more-easily connected, but there’s something still something magical about a handwritten note.
Footnotes
1 Not totally without precedent, though: my mum sent me a hand-painted “cold giraffe” postcard this way too!
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