Postcrossing Blog

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

I write a lot about Wales, where my family come from and where I went to university, but this week’s theme allows me to give my current home a bit further north a little love. This time, the prompt is about where you live!

I recently got myself a bicycle to give myself a bit more range for travelling, meaning I’ve been able to go to the library a lot more frequently, run errands without needing my wife to drive me around, etc, etc. Which led to my discovery that my area has a lovely network of cycle paths! They start in convenient spots off the main roads and they’re well-maintained, which is already a lot better than I remember it being back when I lived in Cardiff, but they’re also objectively lovely places to be. The paths are surrounded by trees, and you can hear streams trickling past, hear the birds, and see squirrels scampering swiftly across the path. A bit of reading around told me that they’re actually intended as wildlife corridors, allowing animals to move around the urban landscape better by connecting up different parts of the landscape.

I didn’t know anything about the cycle paths before getting a bike, so it’s been lovely to explore and figure out where they all go. Sometimes I just pick one and follow it just for the fun of exploration!

Now it’s your turn! What do you love about the area you live in? I’m sure there’s something! You can talk about it in the comments here, or write about it on your postcards this month.

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

August was my birthday month, and my wedding anniversary also falls in August, so I had a well-fed month! For my birthday, my family always choose the same place to celebrate, so I was wondering about everyone else… which leads in to this prompt.

Both me and my sister always celebrate our birthdays with food from a Cantonese restaurant in Wakefield, called (perhaps a little non-originally) Pagoda. Usually when we go in person we get a banquet meal for the group, because (with a couple of substitutions) it contains all our favourites: chicken and sweetcorn soup, sesame prawn toast and crispy wontons for appetizers, crispy duck with pancakes… and that’s all before we get to the main course, where we usually get a few options. Personally, I gravitate toward lemon or orange chicken, along with a little bit of sweet and sour pork—though I do like stealing the onions from everyone else’s choices, too.

And finally we do like to wrap up with dessert, even if it doesn’t really match the meal: my sister likes a slice of lemon meringue pie, while I usually either plump for the same or go for a slice of chocolate fudge cake. After that, we just about need to be rolled out of our seats and off to the car to get home… and I don’t think any of us eat much the next day. There’s a reason it’s a special treat!

Are you feeling hungry yet? I think I am… Tell us about your favourites here, or consider writing about them on your postcards this month if you’re stumped for what to say!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

I spend a lot of my time with fictional characters, as someone who reads a lot of fiction and plays video games that have stories. But there’s one question I always struggle to answer… If I could be any fictional character, who would I like to be?

The thing is that I mostly like my life as it is: job, hobbies, abilities, friends and all. It’s hard to imagine wanting to be characters in the murder mysteries I read, or in the often tumultuous worlds of fantasy and sci-fi novels. I enjoy reading about Breq and Seivarden (from Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice), but I definitely wouldn’t want to be them. I enjoy Maia’s court in The Goblin Emperor (by Katherine Addison), but it sounds too formal, cold and uncomfortable to live in. And while I would love to hark back to my childhood and hang out with Benton Fraser and Diefenbaker (Due South) for a little while, I don’t have the courage to be a police officer.

But I don’t want to spoil the fun, and there are some really cool things that characters in these books can do that I’d love to join in with… so after some significant thought, I have to say I’d like to be Irene, from Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library (and sequels). Being able to travel between worlds via an interdimensional library sounds amazing, and having access to books from all those worlds sounds even better.

Sure, I’d have to have some harrowing adventures along the way, but the books might just be enough to make it worth it! (Let’s not kid ourselves. The books would definitely be enough for me.)

What about you? Do you have a fictional character you’d like to be? You can tell us here in the comments if you like, and if you aren’t sure what to write about on your postcards this month, you can write about it there too!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

22nd July is the United Nations’ International Day of Friendship, so what better time for Postcrossing to ask about a topic near to everyone’s heart: friendship!

At the moment my friends from university are scattered all over the UK, but every so often we like to meet up and have a meal. I’m very lucky to live close to the friend I’ve known all my life, though. We were born in the same hospital, went to the same nursery, and then to the same junior school. We’ve been there through thick and thin, and it was her wedding I wrote about on the blog for May’s writing prompt. As you might expect, over the years we haven’t always had the same interests, and we’re almost more like siblings than anything else, so generally we keep our relationship healthy by meeting up often and chatting, rather than shared activities. Lately we’ve been going for walks around a local country park, at Newmillerdam. It’s a lot of fun watching the changes through the year. It’s my turn to buy us ice cream this weekend, too!

Mostly, though, my day-to-day interactions with friends are with online friends who I met through the massively-multiplayer online game, Final Fantasy XIV—I’ve been having incredible fun over the last couple of years meeting up with them in the game and doing things together, like playing hide-and-seek (I’m not very good at it), doing the game’s treasure hunts, and doing “raids” (difficult fights that require a lot of coordination). A large part of the game is made to be experienced with 3–23 other people, so there are lots of opportunities to team up.

Plus I’ve ended up meeting one of them (so far) in person! Over the last year and a half I’ve dragged my new friend “Prof” to several bookshops, a zoo, and a surprise trip to a botanical garden (because he loves plants). Perhaps in July we should start planning our next adventure, in honour of International Day of Friendship! Do you have any special plans to hang out with your friends in July? We’d love to hear about it here, and you can write about it on your postcards if you’re stumped for what to say!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

It’s June already, and many people in the UK (and I’m sure other countries as well!) are doing end-of-year exams, which made this topic jump out to me. Over in the forum, Miriam (Facella) suggested we ask about what people’s dream jobs might be. If money, skills, education, etc, didn’t matter (e.g. you could magically become qualified), what would you like to work as?

Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never really knew how to answer, and I guess I still don’t. I’m basically a perpetual student. I started out in English literature, then moved into science, and am currently trying to finish up my MSc in infectious diseases, via distance learning. Next year will be my last year, and then… Well, then most likely I’ll take a break for a year or two, and then study something new.

It’s not that I don’t love the subject—I’ve loved many subjects! And it’s not that I haven’t been good at the subjects I have studied. I just thrive best when I’m learning new things. So if I could get paid to do that, to just accumulate knowledge, that’d be really nice. But if we’re being more realistic, then the actual job I’m most interested in is science communication. It’d weld together a lot of the skills I do have: communication, research, and the ability to understand the science. (As long as it’s biology or closely related, anyway.) Something like writing for New Scientist would be very cool—or writing books like the Object Lessons series or Bloomsbury Sigma…

Anyway, that’s enough daydreaming from me—what about you? What would you do, if you could snap your fingers and make it happen now? We’d love to hear from you in the comments, but you can also write about that on the postcards you write this month!