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!

Gifts are on my mind lately, as I finally, gleefully begin to acquire the presents I’ll spoil my family with on Christmas Day. (No, Mum, I won’t be revealing it here, sorry!) So I was glad to notice one of the suggested prompts on the forum, from Eva (aka lauranalanthalasa)…

As usual, I’ll go first! My dad is famous, or infamous, for his gift for picking the right gift. Sometimes they’re useful, sometimes they just perfectly suit you, sometimes they’ve very silly… but he rarely misses the mark! So one Christmas a few years ago, I went downstairs to find a very mysterious wrapped shape. It was about 5 feet tall (1.5 metres), so only a little shorter than I was… and the shape just made no sense at all. I can’t remember if the other members of my family knew about it, or whether we were all equally befuddled, but my dad was definitely enjoying himself way too much.

Given the photo I’ve added, you all know where this is going. When I was eventually allowed to unwrap it, a beautiful carved wooden giraffe emerged! I’d admired it in a shop window about six months before, and I’d always been a big fan of giraffes… so my dad went back for him, kept him hidden somewhere, and produced him on Christmas Day when I’d forgotten all about him. He’s called Parker (after Detective-Inspector Charles Parker, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ books—I don’t remember why!) and he looms in the background of my Zoom calls to this day.

The next year, of course, there was another large and strangely shaped present, which he’d labelled prominently with the words “not a giraffe”.

What about you? What’s the best present you’ve ever received? Is it something you still have now, an experience you had, something you remember from childhood…? We’d love to hear about it in the comments here and 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!

Many of us, as Postcrossers, end up seeing quite a lot of our local post office, one way or another. In some ways, they’re similar all around the world, because they have the same basic function: allow people to send letters and parcels, nationally and internationally. But there are a lot of differences, too, from the colour scheme to the things the post office might share a building with—so that’s this month’s prompt!

My local post office is really tiny. It’s in the little shop on the corner that sells a range of convenient things like bread, baked beans, snacks and pre-made sandwiches. There aren’t many other shops close by, so that shop has a bit of everything, including the post office and a small selection of envelopes, writing paper and boxes for mailing things. You have to kind of squeeze in there, and there’s always a wait because there’s normally only one person manning both the cash register and the post office window!

Because of that, I can never quite manage to go to the post office without also coming away with some snacks, a loaf of bread, and whatever else we managed to forget while doing the shopping earlier in the week. Also, you end up hearing about everybody else’s business, because the people in front of you are sending a care package to their daughter at university, returning something they bought on Ebay or picking up foreign currency ready for their trip to Greece. Somehow it’s never just buying a book of stamps, and because it’s a small local shop, everyone wants to chat…

What’s your local post office like? Is it big and impersonal, or do you see your neighbours there? Do you know the people you buy stamps from, and do they know you do Postcrossing? We’d love to hear all about it, in the comments on this post and on your postcards in October!

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 prompt was suggested by iwritedeb! She suggested that we all write about our neighbourhoods, which seems like a great way to learn more about people all over the world! Where do you live, what’s it like, and is there anything unique about it?

I live in a pretty suburban area, but within a stone’s throw of farmland. If I look out of my window, I can see a hayfield which has recently been harvested. There’s a small farm nearby with geese, a field where a horse and a pony hang out together, and a lot of nice houses, each with their own garden. We’re not far from the town centre, but here it’s nice and quiet.

Often in the UK you don’t know your neighbours very well, but I like going for walks in the area, so people see me around and we know each other well enough to say hello. Strangely enough, my little corner of Yorkshire is full of Welsh people: there are two other Welsh families on our street, including a gentleman with a dog who is even keener about the rugby than I am (the man is, I mean, not the dog). I always joke that it’s because the weather in Yorkshire is so similar to the weather in Wales: it’s always raining!

My neighbourhood is kind of quiet and unexciting, but I’m sure you can all do better than that! You can write about your neighbourhoods in the comments right here, on the postcards you send out this month… or both! We’d love to hear from you.

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 prompt comes from candyflosscurls on the forum! Many countries have their own wise sayings and proverbs, and sometimes they’re a fascinating reflection of the culture or of stories that other countries don’t share. So this month, we’re suggesting you share those!

I must admit that I had to turn to Google for this. I don’t actually speak Welsh, and didn’t grow up in Wales… and it’s hard to know what English proverbs might be unusual or interesting for other people, knowing how widespread proficiency in English can be! So it was from Wales Online that I found this one: “Bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn”. It literally means (according to my very basic Welsh and Google Translate) “casting old wives and sticks”, but Wales Online translated it as “it’s raining old wives and walking sticks”. I guess that’s a variation on “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but it sounds a bit more cantankerous. Mind you, the Welsh certainly know rain! There’s a joke I’ve told about both Wales and where I live now in Yorkshire: there are three states of weather here: it’s either raining, it’s just rained, or it’s about to rain.

I can think of some lovely words of Welsh I actually know, if that might count! “Hiraeth” is the word for an intense homesickness or longing, specifically for one’s home in Wales. Obviously that’s a word that served my family well, living up in Yorkshire! But my favourite is the word “cwtch”, which I use fairly often. It means a hug or cuddle, but “cwtch” also means cupboard, a safe place to put things… so when you offer someone a cwtch, you’re offering them both a hug and a safe place. It’s such a warm word!

So that’s my contribution! What about you? Can you think of any proverbs or sayings from your country that might be interesting to share? If so, we’d love to hear about them in the comments, but you can also use that as a prompt if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards!

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, we’ve chosen a prompt from a forum post by esca0417 which really piqued our interest. We all have special topics that we know a lot about, from postcards to trains to almost anything else you can imagine… but what are the topics that you don’t yet know about, the ones where you’d love to learn everything and become an expert? What would you pick?

For me, it’s really difficult to choose… I have so many interests I know a little about, and I’d love to know more about any one of them. Some have been preoccupations since childhood (Ancient Egypt and dinosaurs), and some are more recent (the history of fabrics and food, for instance). And for me, the journey is half the fun, so I wouldn’t choose to skip to the end of my degree and be an expert in epidemiology right now!

I think in the end I’d choose something that gives me a chance to learn even more about something that I already find interesting—I’d love to become an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphs, so that I can actually read ancient inscriptions for myself. I’m not great at learning languages or deciphering visual things, so in this case I’d really appreciate the boost of a magic wish to become an expert overnight.

Of course, now I’ve picked something, I can think of a dozen other subjects I’d love to become an expert in… maybe I’ll write about some of those on the postcards I send this month! If you’re not sure what to write on your own postcards this month, maybe you can do the same? We’d love to see your ideas about what you’d become an expert in here in the comments, as well!