Postcrossing

I've always been a keen sender and receiver of mail. I'm also interested in the logistical side of the postal service. I collected stamps as a boy but the main thrill for me is the welcome sound of letters hitting the doormat or returning home and glancing into the hallway to see if anything has arrived. As a teenager, I collected football programmes and obtained many batches through the post. There was even a fad for play-by-mail gaming at one stage! I've subscribed to various publications throughout my life, joined several clubs and societies that sent out literature by mail, written to different organisations and individuals. A whole bundle of stuff basically. The slow change started in the late 90s with the advent of the internet.

My postbag initially swelled as I became active online as I discovered endless websites offering books, CDs, DVDs etc for sale, plus as a young single bloke without responsibilities, I had plenty funds to indulge myself not to mention ample time to consume the material. Gradually the electronic forms of communication began to exert their influence and I found myself drifting towards a digital lifestyle. A book of stamps could sit in my wallet for months on end and I would peel one off if I had to send a birthday card. I kept up my postal DVD rentals (still do) and still received some paper literature but much of my affairs had migrated online. Lockdown initially pushed me further into the paperless world as I took out electronic subscriptions for my railway magazines and bought newspapers via the Kindle store.

However I did order some traditional printed matter during the enforced stay at home period and mail deliveries - if somewhat irregular - became a feature of the domestic routine. Something to look out for. With many of my favourite pubs, cafés, bookshops etc bolting their doors for weeks on end, I hit upon the idea of penning a few letters of support. I initially though about scribbling out messages on postcards but I didn't have a ready supply and decided I wanted to say more than just a few lines. Instead, I created a letterhead on A4 paper and filled a page with text. I included my contact details lest anyone wish to get back to me. Several places did. Always by email. I must have fired off between 20 and 30 letters in total but I did resort to email for some of my communication as - of course - postage costs soon mount up. Around this time, I joined the Handwritten Letter Society after spotting their Facebook presence. It's not a penpal group, rather a statement of intent that you will endeavour to keep the art of traditional letter writing alive. I remitted my £5 joining fee and my pack duly arrived from Dorset, along with a lovely letter from organiser Dinah. I received an A4 certificate, pin badge and postcard. A nice little enterprise and I follow the society on social media - contributing now and again. I have since found a couple of penpals online, from Lincolnshire, London and Liverpool. You could easily rack up dozens of people to correspond with and several Facebook sites are dedicated to this activity. What's probably the most surprising thing for middle-aged folk exploring the penpal posts is the large amount of young people seeking to physically write to somebody. You might assume the so-called digital natives would give little thought to the matter of putting pen to paper but a single trawl through a Facebook group would quickly dispel that notion. I would hazard a guess the experience of writing and receiving letters provides a welcome, slower paced, distraction from the hustle and bustle of instant communication. Anyway, I had received my postcard from the Handwritten Letter Society. What would I do with it? To whom would I mail it? I did keep up the habit over the years of sending postcards to my parents when on holiday and I still maintain this family tradition. But I can't remember the last time I sent one to another household. With no real expectations, I searched for postcard sending projects and I hit upon something called Postcrossing. Within a minute or two, I realised this was exactly what I was looking for.

I signed up and requested an address. My first card was going to a woman called Oksana in the Ukraine. I shipped it off at the cost of £1.45. Annoyingly, there is no special postcard rate in the UK and they are classed as international letters in the lightest weight category. So how does Postcrossing work? When you join, you can write to a maximum of five random people. A link to each person's profile is supplied, along with their name and address. You are also give a unique reference code which must be written somewhere on the card. Upon delivery, the recipient enters the code into the website and the system registers that you have successfully sent a postcard. Your name and address is then put into the pot for another member to correspond with. In a nutshell, for every card you send you are due one back. You have no control over the destinations. All traffic is generated by the computer. The clever part is that you cannot receive any cards until you have actually sent some. I would discover just how important this condition was when I attempted to form my own local postcard circle. After writing to Oksana, I quickly decided I wanted to send a few more. All I needed to do was source a few postcards. I found a lady on Etsy selling packs of her own Edinburgh Castle designs. That got me up and running and it's good to support an independent artist from Scotland. I've bought a few of Cassandra's rather fetching images (pictured above) and I pick up a few cards on my travels now and again to keep my stack topped up. I even managed to grab a handful of freebies from Lidl as part of a government sponsored St Andrew's Day celebration. Some people go to elaborate lengths on their profiles to describe which type of designs they'd like (or not like) to receive. I tend to ignore much of this as I figure I'm the one sending, so I choose. I do read the profiles to see if I can tailor my message to suit the interests of the addressee. English is of course the lingua franca but my cards to the German speaking lands are often written auf Deutsch. When you register a card, you can also write a message of thanks to the sender, which I always do. When one of your cards arrives safely, an email alerts you to this fact. You can then request another address and so the process continues. Due to the complexity of the algorithm (which tries to ensure a healthy spread of countries) and the ebb and flow of people wishing to send, you sometimes receive more cards than you might expect, although this apparently evens out in the long run.

All good clean fun! Five cards can travel simultaneously for beginners but as your tally increases, you are awarded extra slots. I'm currently allowed to have eight cards travelling concurrently. I'm not exactly sure about the origin of my first received card. I arrived home from a holiday in the south of Scotland to find two in the hallway. One from France (pictured) and another from Germany. I've since received messages from all over Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan, China, Singapore and Taiwan. Also one from the UK. Nothing yet from Australia, South America or Africa. But it's a long term hobby. Travel times vary wildly and may well be skewed due to the Covid situation across the globe. A card to Holland may arrive within three days, one to Russia or China can take several weeks! Delivery in those countries could possibly be delayed due to translation issues with the Latin script. Some Russian members do display their details in Cyrillic and that's not difficult to copy. I haven't yet attempted this with Chinese characters! If a card is not registered within 60 days of dispatch, it becomes "expired" - meaning you can then ask for another person to write to. This has happened to me once with a card to America. Perhaps it got lost in the post or the recipient simply forgot to enter the code. The whole system relies upon people actually sending the cards and those receiving them to log the details. I always enter the details carefully online. I assume the program already knows who is sending to whom and will alert you if you type in a code that refers to a different card or doesn't match at all. Haven't tested that yet. Royal Mail recently hiked the price of an international postcard to £1.70 (equivalent to two first-class stamps) - a whopping 25p increase. I feel this is somewhat unjustified given that I receive cards from Germany which travel on a single 95 cent stamp. Pretty much half our rate! Americans pay just $1.20 which pans out around 90p. Surely we could have a global postcard stamp for a quid? I'm going to contact Royal Mail today and see what they say about that. I read a few weeks ago that parcel volumes have now overtaken letters in our domestic mail service for the first time. There has certainly been a boom in online ordering for Christmas this year! The Queen's mail is now run as a private company and obviously they will concentrate on areas of business that offer the best returns. One thing that must stick in their craw is the way private courier firms can dump items on Royal Mail that are destined for harder to reach areas. The likes of UPS and TNT can use their own drivers to cream off the profitable routes. The economy rate for international postcards (beyond Europe) has been raised from £1.18 to £1.45. I've seen people say on forums that there isn't much difference in delivery time between the two tariffs. Meanwhile on the home front, a first-class stamp now costs 85p (up from 76p) while second class has gone up by a mere penny to 66p. The latter offers good value for non-urgent domestic letters, considering the weight limit is a generous 100g.

I mentioned I attempted to set up my own little UK postcard group. I placed a few messages on penpal pages and around 15 people said they would like to join. I duly collected all the addresses and instructed everyone to whom they should send. Rather than mutual exchanges, I formed a loop of names and each person would write to the next, in a clockwise direction. Next time around, two along, and so on. I structured the initial circle so that people wouldn't be receiving cards from their own geographical area (although in time this would become inevitable). I had a good spread of members from Dorset to Banffshire. By the second round, I had over 20 participants but the cracks started to show. One lady said she was leaving because she'd sent two cards but had received none in return. Other people had commented on the group page with similar tales. It dawned on me that even though someone actively signs up for a group, there is no guarantee they will take part. Rather naïve on my part, but you live and learn. I get it - people join in good faith but maybe life gets in the way. Or you try it once and decide it's not for you. Fair enough. What puzzled me slightly were the responses to my sending instructions where folk said they would get on the case, then clearly didn't. Perhaps a way of getting me off their back. Or it's possible they simply forgot. Again, I understand. As a counter measure, I decided to make the third merry-go-round an opt-in affair. I posted on the group asking people to confirm whether they wanted to participate. Eleven said yes. Not bad. One chap however was one of they guy's that had failed to send before (as postmaster you can work these things out). I'll give him another chance, I thought. But this time he sends to me. That way, there's less chance of a committed member losing out. Quite a few folk posted images of their received cards and I felt this round was a success. I, of course, got nothing in the mail. I wonder if he'll throw his hat in the ring for the next exchange in the new year? Some of the twenty-somethings use phone apps that allow you to create your own card and pay a fee to have it mailed on your behalf. Mixing tradition with new technology. I like it.

The Postcrossing website allows you to store an electronic "wall" of your cards. Here is a selection of mine. So where do I put the physical product? I purloined a supply of A4-sized plastic pouches and started filing the cards by country. Sets of flag stickers were ordered from eBay and one was placed in the postage-stamp corner of each wallet. Nicole also bought me an old-style photo box which (I think) is designed to hold pictures measuring 6 x4 inches. Most postcards conform to this size but some are slightly bigger. I have divided the box by continent and any cards that don't fit find a home in the plastic folders. I'm definitely in this for the long term and am hoping to build a collection covering most of the world. If people think I'm nuts then I can confirm their diagnosis as being 100% accurate. It takes all sorts.