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!

This month’s theme is mythological creatures, and anyone who’s been following along with my writing prompt posts can probably have a good guess at where my first thoughts went, being Welsh: dragons! What mythological creatures leap to mind for you?

I said dragons were the first creatures to leap to mind (there’s a dragon on the Welsh flag, after all), and they’re deep at the root of some of my favourite myths and legends. (For example, the origin story of Merlin, in Arthurian legends, involves two dragons fighting under the foundations of a castle and causing it to fall down repeatedly.) That said, we’re nearing the Christmas season, and I have another sort of creature in mind: the Mari Lwyd.

Strictly speaking, the Mari Lwyd isn’t really a mythological creature. Traditionally, a Mari Lwyd is a horse’s skull mounted onto a stick and carried round by a person hidden beneath a cloth. It’d be carried around the village or town by a group, who would knock on doors and demand entry, with the Mari causing havoc by snapping its jaws and making a mischief of itself. It was basically an excuse for a party, with lots of food and drink and horsing around. My first meeting with a Mari Lwyd wasn’t like that, though: I read about it in a fantasy novel, Susan Cooper’s Silver on the Tree, where it’s a living creature of sorts, and chases two of the protagonists. It’s a genuinely tense and creepy scene, and part of a book I really love, so perhaps it’s no surprise the Mari Lwyd is deep in my imagination!

Of late, I’ve noticed a lot of people in the wider world talking about Mari Lwyd traditions online, sometimes adding their own flourishes (which is fine, as far as I’m concerned—I’m sure the Mari has caused mischief in many ways over the years). Every year, someone sends me some variant of the image I’ve included with this post: “If you’re cold, they’re cold. Let the Mari Lwyd in.” (I’ve received my first one this year, in November! Like mince pies going on sale, the Mari Lwyd seems to begin earlier every year…) The actual history of the tradition is mixed and confusing, but you can read more about it on Wikipedia if you’re interested in the ins and outs.

So this month, let’s hear about your mythological creatures! Are they creepy or friendly? How seriously are they taken? Are there any interesting traditions about them? You can answer in the comments on this post, or write about them in the postcards you send this month. Or both!

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!

As I write this ready for the new month, I’m headed down to Wales for a visit to my family. There won’t be much time for sightseeing, as it’s very much a flying visit, but hopefully I can pick up some postcards (and maybe send out one or two) showing my favourite places in Wales. Which brings me to this month’s writing prompt: let’s talk about some beautiful places, and share our love for them.

For me, the answer was immediately obvious: Castell Coch. I’ve talked about it before on the blog, because something about it has always grabbed my imagination, ever since I was little. “Castell Coch” is Welsh for “Red Castle”, after the warm-coloured sandstone that the walls are built from. The current building is from the 19th Century, and is in the Gothic Revival style, but it’s built on the site of earlier fortifications, and it has extremely beautiful interiors designed by an architect called William Burgess.

But my favourite part of Castell Coch isn’t the view up close and personal (though it’s very worth a personal investigation), or the view from the towers. The thing I think is really magical about Castell Coch is the way it looks rising above the trees, from a bit of a distance. Those spires on the towers make it just like a fairytale, maybe even a little Disney-like, and the trees rising all around it make it a little mysterious. You can catch a glimpse of it just driving past on the motorway: as a child on various trips with my grandparents, I always got very excited by the chance to see my favourite castle as we drove by.

If I’m really lucky this weekend, I’ll be able to grab some postcards showing Castell Coch—maybe even an aerial view, or at least a photograph of it nestled among the trees. What are the views and landmarks that you just can’t wait to share? Bonus points if you can send a postcard showing that view, I’d say! But you can also share your thoughts here—we’d all love to hear about the beautiful places you love.

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!

Board games and card games can be a great way to spend some time with family and friends, and perhaps even get away from screens for a while (though some can be played remotely using software like Tabletop Simulator!). A lot of my fondest memories as a child are of playing Snap tournaments with my grandad—though we started playing Rummy when I was a bit older—and playing board games with my paternal grandmother. I’ve got back into playing this sort of game lately with my wife and my sister, and we’re starting to amass a little collection of games.

When it’s just me and my wife, we usually reach for Virus. It’s a simple and quick game, and we had a long-running tournament running into hundreds of games… until we lost track of who’d won how many times.

When we’re hanging out with my sister as well, we tend to go for Unstable Unicorns. The art on the cards is ridiculously cute, we got all the expansions, and both of them take far too much delight in beating me just as I’m about to fill up my “stable”. We’ve also got Uno when we want something more traditional; I’ve even played a tournament or two of Uno with my wife’s grandparents.

What about you? What card games or board games do you remember from your childhood? What games do your play now? We’d love to hear about that in the comments here, or on your postcards this month, and there’s even a board games topic in the forums!

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!

One of the postcards I sent this month (a lovely one of magpies from the “Wild Cards” set by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris) made me think about this a lot: what are the birds like where you are? As I wrote on that postcard, I know that British robins are quite different from North American robins, but I think (and the recipient confirmed) that our magpies are the same. So that’s this month’s writing prompt: let’s talk about birds!

The back garden of the house I grew up in has a lot of bird visitors, because my dad has hung up various different kinds of bird feeders and fat blocks to make it a friendly place for them. There’s running water from a fountain, and to top it off, my dad throws out sultanas to them every day as an extra treat. The main visitors—the ones we always watched for the most—are blackbirds (a kind of thrush, apparently, with the scientific name Turdus merula). They’re really common birds in the UK, but we got to be fond of them and the way they ran around our lawn, officiously trying to chase off other birds.

We actually have a family of blackbirds that visit our garden who all have partial albinism, with just a streak here and there of white against their black feathers. So we can sometimes recognise individuals… and there are also blackbirds who are becoming rather tame, and will come right up to my dad to demand their sultanas. They’re less keen on me, though, since I don’t usually come bearing gifts.

What about you? What birds do you see locally, or which birds do you especially like? You can answer in the comments here, but you can also use it as a prompt for your postcards this month, if you’re not sure what to write!

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 July now, so here in the UK most university students have just finished with their exams, schools are winding down ready for the summer, and we’re all complaining it’s too hot. (Or, if it isn’t warm, we’re complaining about the rubbish summers we get in this country. It’s a national sport.) So for a lot of us, it’s time to think about how we’re going to put our feet up and relax.

For me, not too surprisingly if you’ve seen my other posts on the blog, my primary way of relaxing is to spend time reading. I have a magpie mind and I’ll try pretty much anything once, so I read all sorts: sci-fi, fantasy, mysteries, romance, science, history… My special favourites are the British Library Crime Classics. I even have a subscription with the British Library so they send me the newest book each month.

The other main thing I do during my downtime is play Final Fantasy XIV. It’s an MMORPG, so there’s a main storyline (which I’ve finished), lots of side stories (which I’ve barely begun) and various different levels of difficulty. Pictured is my character hanging out with the with one of the mail “moogles”, a little creature that delivers mail in the game. In one of the sidequests, you take on the mail moogle’s job and deliver mail, eventually earning yourself a postal worker’s hat… I’m still working on mine, though!

How about you? What do you do to relax? Are you looking forward to a quieter summer after finishing exams, like me? We’d love to hear from you via comments, but you can also use this prompt to help you write postcards this month!