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!

Since I joined Postcrossing, I’ve started thinking a lot more about stamps. I always used to have some around from writing to my parents while I was at university, but I didn’t think a lot about them until I started being more aware of the sheer variety available. Other people’s interest in stamps made me take an interest too: seeing requests to receive specific stamps made me look for them wherever possible, and then keep up with what other stamps might be available so I could make sure to use some interesting stamps. So this week’s topic was prompted by John (aka mezzanine2) in the forum!

For quite a while, even before I used Postcrossing, I personally liked using the “country definitive” stamp for Wales, with the dragon on it for first class, a leek design for second class, and a daffodil for international stamps. I had to order them online, since I live in England, but for me it was a little way of showing where I come from. The dragon is of course one of Wales’ best-known symbols, and is on our flag. The leek on a second-class stamp is actually a design carved in Welsh sycamore wood, and is another symbol of Wales: one of the stories behind that is supposedly that a 7th century Welshman who was king of Gwynedd, King Cadwaladr, told soldiers to wear leeks on their helmets to help them identify each other during a battle. And finally the daffodil is the national flower of Wales, and often worn by Welsh people on St David’s Day. They probably snuck in because leek is “cennin” in Welsh, while daffodils are “cennin pedr”… and daffodils look prettier pinned to your jacket!

In the UK, it’s also an interesting time as the stamps are in the process of switching from having Queen Elizabeth II’s head to having King Charles III’s profile. Sometimes at the moment I’m using one of each monarch to make it up to the right value!

How about you? Do you choose interesting stamps, or just get whatever the post office have? You can share your thoughts in the comments here, or use this as a prompt for what to write 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!

For this month’s writing prompt, Jane suggested a fun idea in the forum topic. Idioms and sayings related to colour are common, but can mean very different things in different countries. For example, “to be blue” means one thing in English (being sad), while in German it means something else altogether (being drunk).

I only speak English well, so I don’t know how well a lot of the idioms I say translate into other languages. For example, if I say “tickled pink”, is there an equivalent of that in French or Japanese or Farsi…? If I talk about “being the black sheep”, would that make sense if it was translated literally into other languages? I feel like “black sheep” might translate quite well, because sheep are usually white (if you ask someone to draw a sheep, they’ll probably draw something white and fluffy), and it’s pretty clear that the black sheep would stand apart from a herd of white sheep… though this, too, is probably regional. If you have mostly black sheep in your country, maybe the term for someone different would be “white sheep”…?

And what about other idioms? That seems a lot less simple. “Red herring”, a favourite term for mystery writers in English, for example… I can imagine that you could say “red herring” in another language and it’d just sound like you were speaking literally of a fish that is red. I’m definitely curious to hear whether that term translates, or how you’d refer to a misleading clue in your language!

It’s a fascinating subject, and we’d love to read your answers here in the blog comments. But you can also use it as a topic to write about this month, if you’re not sure 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!

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!