Tag: postcards

Some Postcards for You

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Hi friends,

I’m writing to you from my sister’s dining room table in Lexington, Kentucky today. I’m sitting by the garden door and revelling in the cool breeze that’s coming in. It’s so fresh I even have to wear a shawl. Imagine that! After the scorching temps in Muscat and the small heat wave in Tel Aviv on my visit last week, this is absolute perfection.

Anyway, onto the good stuff.

A few weeks ago, I asked you to help me with my postcard project by telling me three things to put together in drawing. So without further ado, here are the first three cards that I’ve made and sent off for you.

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Three things: Marmite, One Direction, bunting. Sent to: Slovenia

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Three things: mermaid, hula hoop, wine Sent to: France

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Three things: a child, an umbrella, a star Sent to: Saudi Arabia

Thanks for all the ideas you sent! They are all really exciting and challenging in different ways. I look forward to making more for you! If you haven’t requested one already (or if you want another, I suppose) you can send me your ideas here and I’ll draw one up for you.

Cheers,

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Henley-on-Thames

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Last week was a little bit crazy. I was working for my third consecutive year at the Henley Literary Festival in the small town of Henley-on-Thames about an hour west of London. As always, the week absolutely flew by. I’ve learned that when time is measured in 20-45 minute increments, it is almost impossible to slow it down. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. I was monstrously productive in the 20 minutes of chaos we had between every event. But it took me half of the down time I did have to relax and enjoy a small break before I had to ramp up again for the next 20 minutes of madness.

I did manage to sneak in some moments of relaxation though: I wrote several overdue cards to friends, I journaled (a lot), I cuddled with the softest puppy I have ever met, I had a (somewhat) leisurely lunch with my favourite boy, I went for a morning stroll by the river and I sent a postcard to my new friend in Paris. Oh yeah, and I was interviewed by Robert Elms on BBC London. Continue reading →

The Postcard Post

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If I’m going to be talking about slowness on this site, I will have to start with one of my favourite slow things of all time: postcards.

I love postcards.

I love sending them. I love receiving them. I love that they take so long to get where they are going that you forget you sent them in the first place. I love that they were there with the writer, that they made a journey to get to the reader, and that they show signs of adventures they can never tell anyone about. I just love them.

I also love that everything about the postcard process is slow.

I deliberate endlessly over cards, making sure to get one that I think the person receiving it will appreciate. I take some time to think about that person, what they find interesting, what they enjoy doing, and of the stories or experiences from my trip that would appeal most to them. I write deliberately and use up every inch of the card (often forgetting room for stamps and addresses). And I always send a little wish when I drop it into the post box that it survives the journey (mostly intact) and gets there eventually, even though I know it can sometimes take months to arrive.

A Postcard a Day

When I was travelling in Southeast Asia a couple of years ago, I decided to take on a postcard project – one postcard a day, every day, for 30 days. Because I like the idea that the card was actually there with the person writing it (that it smells all the smells, sees all the sights and hears all the sounds around it while it is being written on), I thought of taking a photo of the card in the place I wrote it, so that, along with the card and my message, the recipient could get a little taste of the experience it went through as well.

Here’s what some of them looked like: Continue reading →