Here we are again, the time of the holiday postcard, somewhat consigned to history by the mobile phone. But not entirely.
The question remains why we still bother with them. Sometimes, of course, it’s simply swank: here I am on a posh beach in the Mediterranean, or it is to reassure that the sender hasn’t forgotten their family at home.
Sometimes the cards are simply a way of suggesting we’re having a better time than we are. They can be for almost any reason, often for not even a polite one. I know of someone who sent a card showing a vault filled with skulls and skeletons, which they signed with the message, “Wish you were here.”
Cyril Ray, who usually wrote about wine, once sent a card showing absolutely vast gap-toothed Dutch peasants, captioned: “It’s the third from the left that brings out the beast in me.”
When I was hitch-hiking around France as a 20-year-old, I had to send a card every second day to show my parents I was still alive, though what they thought they could do if it didn’t arrive I never discovered.
Being able to ring a mobile phone instead is doubtless useful to deal with that problem, and now it’s not only family members but famous people who use all those image-sharing websites and apps for exactly the same purposes – boasting, swank, informing others they are still alive – as we used to with a postcard.
But that all seems a bit general. The cards were personal; long may they last.
What do you think? Have your say below
