Postcards from the past

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Here is a postcard from me to all of you . It's the famous bridge at Avignon that people dance on in the song. As you see it's only half a bridge. That's why you have to pay to go on it, I think. That was one place I visited this summer.

​Hardly anyone sends postcards any more, do they? You and your friends probably just put pictures on Instagram. This year I only got one postcard, and here it is

I remember when the sending of postcards was a big feature of being on holiday. Sensible people (like my father) would go out on the first morning to buy a selection of postcards and stamps, and spend the first day on the beach writing them. Of course you had to write different things to different people -what if your auntie found out you'd written the same thing to your grandmother? 
Then you had to remember to post them , so that they would arrive before you got home.
​I used to envy friends who had to write 'ANGLETERRE' or 'INGHILTERRA' because they were somewhere   properly abroad. We were in North Wales, only a hundred miles from home, but still it was fun having to write ENGLAND. 
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I began writing this post before I read the sad news that the firm of J Salmon is about to close, after well over a hundred years of publishing postcards of British places. This is one I received last year - a collector's item now.