Remembering CJ

Yesterday,  jabblog had a post entitled Remembrance - a topic which happens to coincide with two remembrance days of my own this time of year. 

Last year, when I learned that my blogging and postcard-loving friend CJ in England (also known as John, or in blogging context as Scriptor Senex) had passed away, I wrote a memorial post based on postcards he sent me during our first year of postcard correspondence (2012). Those cards were only the first of many more to follow. I collected all of them all in chronolgical order in photo pockets in binders along the way, and also scanned them. So why not share a few more now that another year has passed... The ones below are from 2013, and represent some things we both liked. 

 

Books / Reading

Historical buildings, architecture, art...

(No 10 Downing Street, London)

Fairy tales and fantasy 

Postcrossing and Snail Mail...

Beautiful butterflies

 

 
Cute children's books illustrations

"(23rd October) I'm rather hoping that our larder does not look like this when we get back from holiday. We are now in a hotel near Hay-on-Wye, the bookshop capital of England/Wales. ---"

Liverpool Cathedral

... Oddities in unexpected places ...

"(6 November) If you ever visit Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, you must look for the church mouse! It's on a memorial to the Earl of Derby, but even knowing it is there, it's very hard to spot. - Needless to say I chose this card because of our current visitors. It looks as though we have stemmed the tide and someone has given us a tip about keeping them out --- we'll see if it works."

Places he liked to visit, and revisit, like... 

Devon, where a daughter lived

"(May 2013) In a couple of weeks Jo and I will be going down to Helen and Ian's in Devon to cat-sit for a few days so they can have a little holiday..."

 

The isle of Lewis, where his brother GB (of the blog Eagleton Notes) lives...

... and closer to home, Wales...

"(Dec 2013) This Welsh cottage picture just abut sums up the sort of place I would love to live - not that it would be realistic..."

Jane Austen, Letter from December 24, 1798

"(18 Dec 2013) ... I'm excited at having just bought a box of Jane Austen quotations postcards..." 

* * *

PS. I've (alas!) never been to the Hebrides; but way back in my teens, on family holidays, I both visited London and travelled by car through England, Wales and mainland Scotland. So I have fond memories of my own of various British landscapes and famous places - besides all I've learned from books and TV and blogs (and postcards!) over the decades since then. 

80 Million Postcards

Copying this from Postcrossing.com today. (The link will take you to their main page, but I'm not sure you can access their Blog if you're not a member and logged in.)

We’re celebrating this milestone almost exactly 2 years after the last big milestone (70 million), so it looks like our trajectory is still very stable, with an average of 5 million postcards per year.

Calculating the area of all these postcards, we know that they would be enough to carpet the Vatican with postcards two times and a half, or the area of the Forbidden City in Beijing over 1.5 times! Also, assuming each postcard weighs about 5 grams (0.17 ounces), all these postcards would weigh as much as 67 fully grown African elephants!  

📯 📮💌

I've been a member of Postcrossing since May 2013. The main reason for me to join was that I inherited a lot of stamps still usable for the purpose back then. My dad was a stamp collector all his life. In his old age he lost control of the actual "collecting", but still kept subscribing to all new issues. Going through the mountains of paperwork in his study after he died, I kept finding stamp booklets here, there and everywhere...

I decided to use most of those for the purpose for which they were made, and that's how I came to join Postcrossing. (Which I had been introduced to via another blogger - Graham's brother John, for those of you who knew him!) And after I ran out of "free" stamps I have continued anyway; but because of postage rising to ridiculous heights in later years, I have gradually cut back a lot on my participation compared to earlier. (16 cards sent, and 16 received, in 2024.) I still love the basic idea of this international project, though, so I'm happy to still draw attention to it on my blog every now and then. 

My last previous post about it was on World Postcard Day, 1 October 2024. Since then, I have received these below - from California, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Germany.

Catching Up

 I just realised it's been a week since I last put in a "proper" blog post among the pre-scheduled calendar posts. The weather lately has been dominantly dark grey, foggy and cold; and there's not been much to inspire neither photograpy nor writing. 

On Monday this week we had a bit of a break in the clouds though, and I took advantage of that for a walk into town for a haircut + a couple of other errands. (I phoned my hairdresser in the morning and she was able to fit me in.)

The low sun put a spotlight on this view over the park (and church tower in the background) as I approached the town centre.

The Christmas decorations on the footbridges over the river to/from the park have been the same for a few years now. Stars on one, hearts + 'mistletoe' on another.

 

(After the haircut)

 

My artist friend Lena, living on the west coast, recently published a book with a selection of her seaside water colours. I bought one (she sent it to me by post), and decided to have that book as my "Advent calendar" this December. (It will last beyond Christmas, though.) So for now I have put it on an easel, and try to keep to turning just one page a day! (Last summer I visited one of Lena's exhibitions and blogged about that here.)

At home I've also been keeping busy with things like writing my Swedish Christmas cards, and yesterday (Tuesday) I got those plus a couple of parcels posted down at the main post office down by the railway. With post only delivered every other weekday here nowadays, one had better not cut it too close...

This is not the post office, but an old house that I like, in a street where I walk to get there.  (I don't know its history, but nowadays it seems to be an estate agent's office.) 

Recently having seen that Postnord (our postal services) will be raising the postage again in January by another shocking 22%, I also bought some more stamps (of the "forever" kind) while they're still sold at this year's price. I've already cut down a lot on sending postcards (especially via Postcrossing) - but during the years that I've been into that, I've also somehow managed to collect quite a stock of unwritten cards; and it seems a shame not to continue to give those a chance to travel as intended... There's quite a bit of irony to the situation, as one of my reasons to join Postcrossing in the first place was that I inherited a lot of stamps... (Out of which most of the ones usable for sending postcards abroad have long since been used up...) 

However, I just found a way to even things out a bit... Swedish friends living in Thailand sadly had their house flooded back in the summer and a lot of their belongings destroyed. By now they've managed to get most things sorted and renewed etc with help from friends and insurances; but of course they're still missing a lot of personal stuff of the kind hard to replace. The other day my friend mentioned (on FB) wanting to send someone a card and then missing that box of cards that she'd been collecting over a long time (and which did not survive the flood).  So yesterday I put together a varied mix of postcards to send to her. Ironically, it turns out  that the postage needed for sending a package of around a hundred unwritten cards across the world is just about the same as sending three (3) individual cards the same distance...

World Postcard Day & Postcrossing

 

Due to frankly ridiculous rises in postage over the last few years, I've gradually been cutting down a great deal on participation in Postcrossing (anonymous postcard exchange with strangers). But I'm still a member, and 1st October is World Postcard Day, so yesterday and today I've been writing a few cards and letters - both for Postcrossing and to some regular correspondents of mine. 

Postcrossing was launched on July 14, 2005. The website platform was built by Paulo Magalhães, a Portuguese software engineer who loved receiving postcards but did not know many people he could exchange them with. So he coded a website on his free time with the goal of connecting him with other people who also enjoyed sending and receiving postcards. What started as a small side project quickly became a worldwide hobby, shared by many postcard enthusiasts. To date, over 57 million postcards have been exchanged through the platform, with thousands more on the way. 
https://worldpostcardday.com/history

 

Statistics from the Postcrossing website, today:

 

Below are two collages of Postcrossing cards I've received so far in 2024 (and I have sent as many, i.e. about one per month):
 

 

When I first started participating (in 2013) it was because I had inherited a lot of still valid and usable stamps, and decided that the best way to use them was to send them out into the world, as that was what they were intended for in the first place... A decision I don't regret - and it was definitely the right time for it, before postage started skyrocketing! (Had I waited a few years longer, I would have needed so many of those old stamps on the back of each card that it would hardly have left room for the address, let alone anything else...)

My total collection of received postcrossing cards is now over 1000  - which is another reason to cool it down a bit now... (From storage point of view, it would have been better to just keep the old stamps! But not half as fun...)

Postcards from CJ (2012)

Yesterday I mentioned having received news of a 'penfriend' of mine having passed away. I didn't mention his name or other details then as I didn't know at the time how far the news had spread. But as his brother Graham (GB) also wrote an official memorial post yesterday (on his own blog Eagleton Notes), most of our mutual friends probably know by now. So I'd like to add a bit more today.

John (or CJ) Edwards (as blogger also known as Scriptor Senex) was one of the first bloggers I came into contact with after having started my own first blog back in 2009. I think our paths first crossed on an inspirational website called The One Minute Writer (no longer existing). From there I started following his blog Rambles from my Chair - where in turn I made more friends.

It was also through John that I first learned about Postcrossing.  He joined Postcrossing in February 2012; and that's also when he and I started a private postcard correspondence, even though I didn't join the Postcrossing community myself until May 2013. - I just checked his Postcrossing profile page, and I note that in total he sent 1557 cards to strangers via that website; and received as many.

He and I also continued to send each other postcards fairly regularly for twelve whole years, which means I have quite a collection of cards from him alone. (Well over 300.) So it occurred to me to write some sort of memorial post based on those. But I soon realised that if I tried to just pick some random cards from that whole period, I'd get stuck forever in the choosing process. So I decided to stick to the first year, 2012. I think these cards and quotes actually give a pretty good summary of (some) things he enjoyed and was interested in. Like books, words, writing, postcards, stamps, photography, nature, history...

February 2012

The very first postcard, to be followed by many more.

April, 2012

"Since it's such beautiful weather and we have lambs in our fields, I thought I'd send you a glimpse of our Spring."

 

 

(1st June 2012) "It's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee weekend, and yesterday they issued special Jubilee stamps. The one on the right is a favourite of Jo and I (there are eight all in all)."

July 2012

"I'm sure that when GB moved here in the early 70s, people thought this was how he would be living!"

August 2012

 "This will be almost my last chance to 'legitimately' use an Isle of Lewis card to you. Jo arrives today and on Sunday we leave for the mainland to amble back home..."

 

September 2012

"Is Beatrix Potter as popular with Swedish children as with English, I wonder? I have always loved her books, especially as the backgrounds are The Lake District."

October 2012

"Having just got back from Hay on Wye [on the border between England and Wales, renowned for its books and bookshops] this seemed an appropriate card to send to you. I had a really lovely time and must admit I bought far too many postcards. I shall have to be postcrossing until I'm 90 to use them all!"

The  Cross and Rows, Chester, England

 (November, 2012)
"...when GB comes to visit... he and I usually have a day wandering around the Tudor (16th century) shopping arcades and their modern equivalents, doing bits of shopping and taking photos."

Boreray and The Stacs, St Kilda

 (Dec 2012) "I've just finished 'The Blackhouse' [by Peter May, first in the Lewis trilogy] and I hunted through my postcards for one of St. Kilda. It's not the right rock, but at least it has gannets on it. I picked up a few postcards of St Kilda --- because it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a lot of postcrossers collect them."

Autumn Street Market

Our traditional Autumn Street Market (last weekend in September) is back to "full size" this year - after having been very much reduced during the corona years. I.e. the main square as well as nearby streets full of market stalls, and with crowds of visitors. In spite of the weather being windy and with a bit of light rain now and then, I went for a walk downtown to have a look... And I was not the only one!

Toy blowing soap bubbles outside shop

I visited two of my favourite returning market stalls:

One selling socks...

... and one selling cheap postcards ...

If you buy at least 10 cards, they're just 1:00 SEK a piece. They've kept that price in that market stall as long as I can remember. Alas, the same can't be said for the cost of stamps... In 1986 (when I moved to this town), postage within Sweden was 2:10. (Had to look that up just now.) In 2023, domestic postage is 15:00 - and double that for abroad. Which means one can buy 30 cards at the market for the cost of just one overseas stamp! (Current exchange rate: 30 SEK = 2,25 GBP - 2,60 EURO - 2,75 USD)  

Because of the quickly rising cost of postage in later years, I don't send as many postcards now as I used to. But they had some new Christmas motifs, and as I still enjoy the tradition of sending Christmas cards, I could not resist buying a bunch of those... :-)

Linking to Weekend Street/Reflections