Postcrossing Blog

Meet Melvin, a portable and complex contraption made just with the purpose of signing and stamping postcards!

“Conveniently built in two old suitcases, Melvin the Mini Machine is a Rube Goldberg machine specifically designed to travel the world. Each time Melvin fully completes a run, he ‘signs’ a postcard and sticks a stamp to it – making it ready to be sent.”

Melvin was created by design studio HEYHEYHEY, because they had some time to kill and needed a challenge to their creativity. How much fun would it be to have one of these for our own postcards? :D

Thank you mothwriter and badshaped, for forwarding us the video!

What is it like to be a mail carrier? What are the joys and the perils of the job? Is it a “normal” 9 to 5 job? What is the career like?

We’ve wondered about these and other questions, until we found a video that answers them all! Gary Poole is a postman for the Royal Mail, and told icould.com all about his job, in this short video interview:

What do you think? Would you like to be a mail carrier?

On a different note, the winners of last week’s stamp-postcards giveaway have just been randomly picked by Paulo’s little script! They are StojakSiblings from Germany and Renessaince from Belarus. Congratulations! And a big thank you to everyone who shared their favourite stamps on the comments – we’ve discovered some real gems!

Last week, our friend Iris sent us the link to the videoclip below, which brought a big smile to our faces. The song is a little balad called 'I won’t give up’, by Jason Mraz.

The tunes are nice, but what really caught our attention was the amount of stationery displayed in this clip! It’s full of old-school envelopes, stamps, cancelation marks and postcards!

Doesn’t it make you want to write someone a love letter? What are you waiting for? :)

PS – German and/or Chinese users can see the video here or here.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.

Is this poem familiar to you? It’s part of the movie Night Mail, a 1936 documentary film about a LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) Railway mail train.

We’ve talked about the Railway Post Offices before, but on this documentary, you can actually see them in action:

Isn’t it fascinating? The on-board mail sorting, the clip mechanism to snatch the mail bags, the control room… oh! and the British countryside of the 30s!

The poem, which is recited at the end of the documentary is by W. H. Auden. Wikipedia provides some insight about it:

As recited in the film, the poem’s rhythm imitates the train’s wheels as they clatter over track sections, beginning slowly but picking up speed so that by the time the penultimate verse the narrator is at a breathless pace. As the train slows toward its destination the final verse is more sedate.

I hope you enjoyed that glimpse of life on a Railway train!

As for the results of last week’s giveaway, the eight lucky winners are: ladybug513, anitag71, kirimon, lovpinka, leoloco, journeyy, gwyllion and lars. Congratulations!

Show of hands: how many of you are fans of Postman Pat (and his black and white cat)?

We bet that for many postcrossers, this BBC series was a childhood staple and that song brings a lot of good memories!

But for those of you who don’t know it, Pat Clifton is a friendly country postman who delivers letters in the town of Greendale… unless he gets distracted by something going on the village, which he often does! He has a bright red van, and a black and white cat named Jess, in the original version.

The series is popular not only in the United Kingdom, but also around the world, so we might know him by one of his many names:

• Pieter Post (Dutch)
• Pat el cartero (Spanish)
• Postmand Per (Danish)
• Postbote Pat (German)
• Pošták Pat (Czech)
• Poštar Pat (Croatian)
• Carteiro Paulo (Portuguese)
• Pósturinn Páll (Icelandic)
• Postimies Pate (Finnish)
• Postmann Pat (Norwegian)
• Postino Pat (Italian)
• ポストマンパット (Japanese)
• Listonosz Pat (Polish)
• Postás Pat (Hungarian)
• Почтальон Пэт (Russian)

Click the links above to hear the series intro song in that language!
Know of any other versions? Do share! :)