Postcard-porn for wanderlust

On Thursday evening, I walked to the station from where I was working, over near London Bridge. I'd known it was possible and a reasonably straight-forward walk, but hadn't been clear where I needed to go -- so rather than get lost, I'd stuck to taking the tube. It's a shame my work there was only for a few days, as I also worked out where I would need to catch a bus from, should I not want to walk again. Either way, it was a warm and sunny evening, and as I walked across London Bridge I was struck by how much I love the city. Looking out along the Thames, a large battleship (or something that certainly looked like one) had just passed through Tower Bridge, so the bridge was in its iconic "open" position and tourists were taking pictures. Looking in the other direction, I could see the dome of St Paul's Cathedral -- and many more things besides. These picture-postcard sites don't get old for me, like standing in Trafalgar Square and seeing Big Ben between the buildings. And I wonder how I'd feel living in a city somewhere else in the world -- if I'd feel the same way about Toronto or Melbourne or Barcelona or Moscow or... wherever.

Fuelling my speculation and my desire for other countries, is Postcrossing -- or what I'm beginning to consider as a kind of postcard porn for my wanderlust.

This first postcard actually arrived weeks ago, and I've only just got around today to scanning it and uploading it. It seemed like it made more sense to do more than one a time. As you can probably tell, it is my farthest-travelled postcard to date -- having flown all the way from the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. The postcard tells me this city on the edge of the Pacific Ocean was settled by Scottish immigrants in the late 19th century. I'm also reliably informed by the sender Renae that the water in the centre of the picture is Otago Harbour, an old volcanic crater. I look at this, and I look at this place I'm living in, and something certainly seems missing...


Marking my third postcard from Finland, the sender Annina lives in the town of Vantaa, neighbouring Helsinki. Annina tells me about a recent heatwave and thunderstorm, and again I wonder if it's a universal thing to want to talk about the weather or if it's because I'm English? Either way, she tells me she also enjoys photography and took many pictures when she visited Ireland over the summer. When I messaged her to thank her for the card, I asked if there was anywhere I could see these pictures -- but I don't expect a reply.

The picture is entitled "Girl On The Sand", by Helene Schjerfbeck -- the advantage of "art" postcards is naturally it fuels my passion for art and exposes me to new artists I wouldn't necessarily have heard about otherwise. But it doesn't have the same postcard-porn appeal, especially when I haven't heard anything about where she lives -- so I've revised my profile to encourage people to indulge me. And even though I speak only English (and a little bit of French), I've said people can write to me in French, Spanish or Italian as well, since I love the sound of other languages and there's always Babel Fish.

In sending postcards, I have developed a fetish for Paperchase which I already loved for greeting cards, stationery, paper and all things such related -- but now I'm binging on their postcards. The trouble is, I have about five blank postcards ready to go but whenever I get a new person to send them to they always want to see tourist picture-postcards. These are in abundance in London, of course, and I've been finding some really good black and white shots -- but I still keep buying the others.

Am yet to receive a postcard from any wealthy girls living in beautiful, exciting places around the world who want to invite me to stay... No, I don't know what's going on there either -- you'd think it would be common.