Amongst the usual daily doormat accumulation of plain white and manilla envelopes the mere sight of a brightly coloured landscape or picturesque buildings is enough to lift the spirits on the most dreary of mornings.
Such is the regularity and frequency of world travel nowadays that I sometimes lose track of which family member or friend has gone where and when. This can lead to a few moments of mystery and confusion over a depicted postcard scene until recognition of a familiar handwritten scrawl all makes sense as in "oh yes, they did say that they were going to Greece for a holiday but I had just forgotten about it" or "crikey, that vacation came and went very quickly" and "I thought they were giving the continental trip a miss this year and having a staycation".
Our own family holidays involve a ritual on, typically, the last full day, of seeking out and buying a selection of postcards to be sent to close family and work colleagues. We do have the best of intentions to buy cards in the early part of a week away particularly when passing the numerous display racks to be found at regular intervals along any street, promenade or boulevard but there are always a hundred and one other distractions, usually involving food, drink and indigenous entertainment.
Many of our relatives have taken delivery of their lovingly customised postcard well after our return home. We have been able to attribute this to the inefficiencies of a European or Global Postal Service although if the recipients happen to cast a close eye over the stamp and postmark they may well notice it is very local to where we live even if the trip involved a long haul or short haul flight. This is because that even after being under pressure to purchase the assembled bag of postcards is forgotten in the preparations to pack up and leave.
The last minute purchase of postcards can be impulsive .
There is an inevitable risk of some embarrassment when the card is produced by a relative and well intentioned questions are asked about what the scene or attraction was really like. There is a horrible realisation if the picture postcard is of somewhere not actually experienced on that trip.
I received an excellent postcard just yesterday.
The plain reverse has a beautiful postage stamp of a Red Rim Butterfly which is the $2.50 issue for the island paradise of Montserrat. This is located just above Guadeloupe, to the south west of Antigua and Barbuda and south east of St Kitts and St Nevis. These are amongst a chain of islands that run in a crescent shape in the Caribbean from Puerto Rico to mainland Venezuela.
The island is still recovering from a devastating volcanic eruption in the Soufriere Hills in the 1990's, made more difficult by challenging terrain and stresses on a resident population unlikely to be greater than the 4,900 recorded at the 2012 Census.
That might explain that the postage stamp dates from an issue in 2013 .
The delivery period , from the island postmark to dropping onto the doormat of my home in Hull, Yorkshire took just over three weeks.
I have a vision of a slow boat rather than a fast jet being being the main vehicle of Montserrat Postal Service.
There is a self adhesive label, pre-printed bearing my correctly spelled surname which suggests somewhat of a pre-planned and mass posting effort.
The glossy, full colour side of the postcard is of a palm tree in the foreground and a backdrop of thick and lush vegetation with a mountain peak either shrouded in mist or ominously a volcanic plume.
Just to the right of the picture is a familiar, grinning individual, slim and with a bald pate flanked by mad, unruly hair.
The latter could be down to the usual warm, breezy afternoon climate of Montserrat or just mad, unruly hair.
A scrawled message "Hi Peter, it's going well" is signed by John Otway,the self professed biggest failure in rock music.
The postcard is part of a reward package for my participation, with hundreds of fans, in a Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign to allow production of a new Otway Album in the famous recording studios on the island, not used since the 1990's eruption.
The arrival of the card brought a broad smile to my face, a lightness in my step and, to the horror of my family, a good few days of a hummed rendition of the Otway Classic, Really Free.
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