Every postcard tells a story

SARAH WATERS

Yes, I know what we said about letters, but only look at her Anna – the eyes, the expression, she’s you to the life, you in your green silk gown that time – I saw her in a rack in the hotel’s lobby & my heart turned over, I bought her & whisked her out of sight while Fred was browsing the almanacks. That was two days ago, but really I feel it is too hard to have to make do with a paper version while Max keeps the real you at Paris for another three unspeakable weeks – can’t you get here sooner than the 21st? X

(Yes I know we said about letters & when you come you may chide me just as sternly as you like – only do come Anna & if this flusters you, put a match to it.) (You have done the same to me.)

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GEOFF DYER

Found this in a charming little junk shop. Alb as it used to be before it became clogged with traffic. But also an intimation of how it might end up: one building left standing while all around is flattened, Hiroshima’d by some act of terror so huge and purposeless no one dares claim responsibility. Speaking of Manifest Destiny, note, in the background, the expanse of land and sky: the eternal promise of the non-human, “the outside world” as DHL said of his first experience of New Mexico. We go to Santa Fe and on up to Taos tomorrow, to the Lawrence ranch – the third or fourth time I’ve been there. Which makes this a form of auto-(mobile)-pilgrimage, I suppose. Then to Quemado, to the Lightning Field, which I’ve also been to twice before. Christ – what does this say about us and the way we live our lives? That even in the midst of all this vastness a kind of shrinkage is at work, a reduction of the wonders of the world to a kind of expanded rut. Or by “us” and “our” do I really mean “me” and “my”? Answers on a postcard pls. Gx

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AKSHI SINGH

As promised, here is news of our time in London. We’re staying with F’s mother, and last night we were back late-ish (in Barnes late-ish is earlier than late anywhere else).

F’s mother was dressed, as she often is, in blacks and reds, and she’d done her thick heavy hair up with a sparkling lobster-shaped claw clip, with its winking diamantine eye (one of her 80th birthday presents). Remember how I’d searched and searched because I really wanted to get her one in the shape of a crow? Clearly fish are over-represented in such hair accessories, in fact the only bird I could find was a fat hen. Which would of course have been entirely inappropriate.

She knows all the crows of Barnes Common by name, and when she walks there they come to greet her. She downplays this, but when I’m walking back from the train station I’ve seen the crows talking to her! And last winter when she was ill in bed for four days, each day a crow came and sat outside her bedroom window.

We got involved with her crossword, she likes F to help with the anagrams – I’m quite hopeless, as you know. Then she said she’d read something that morning which made her revise her thoughts on political assassination. I’m making tea at this point, and I hear her say: “Because Lenin said that political assassination is a sign of anarchy, in the absence of organised resistance. And I think if Lenin says something we should consider it seriously.” And then when I handed her the tea she said: “What do you think?” Thank heavens she didn’t wait for me to answer, she just smiled and said “I have to say it is terribly satisfying to see horrible people die.” Axx (!!!)

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MAX PORTER

Broseph of Arimethea-Under-Lyme,

Greetings from Tandil, which has not been a complete waste of time. Have had epiphany about Atlantean technology. They SURELY went to space, only possible explanation. 25000 BC!

We need to revisit Dur Kurigalzu with fresh eyes for the ziggurat. January? What say you to a Mesopotamian mini-break little broeder?

Top three thoughts for you to stick in your pipe and smoke:

1. Could Brinsley le Poer Trench be right about the Somerset temple? Off his rocker but potentially spot on?

2. Stop using cream on jock itch. Powders WORK. I repeat POWDERS NOT CREAM. Keep whole area dry. Nothing short of a knickerbocker revolution here.

3. I think we should scatter daddy’s ashes at Wellow, in the barrow. Nothing but the best.

See you in two weeks thereabouts. Are you still off the sauce? Sleeping better?

Semper Fidelis!

Your intellectually superior sibling,

George

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ALI SMITH

I was in a junk shop in Wales when I found this postcard.

I tell you. I nearly passed out. I’m pretty sure the woman on the chairlift in it, apparently a chairlift in Perthshire in Scotland, is my mother.

This is where I tell you that I didn’t know my mother, that my mother died in the hospital on the day she gave birth to me.

Don’t feel sorry for me, or for her. Life is very much like this, we all know it, regardless of how it’s meant to be, to look, to appear, to turn out.

Anyway. I’d dodged across the disused railway tracks and into this shop to get out of a sudden heavy rainshower. The shop was pretty standard: old carpet, smell of damp, cabinet of brooches and rings with a knot of necklaces on an old china saucer, deskdrawer or two of old postcards.

This one was at the front of the postcards in one of the drawers.

She was high off the ground, resplendent in red, as if riding on a flying red snake, and she was wearing sunglasses.

I bought the card. £1.50. I borrowed a magnifier from the man behind the desk.

Yes. I was right.When magnified she seemed to be smiling.

I took the postcard to my father’s care home.

Did you ever go to Glenshee with mum? I said. Did she ever go up in a chairlift?

He took the card. He squinted at it.

That’s not your mother, he said.

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SOPHIE ELMHIRST

M + D

I send this with irony, a concept I hope you have managed to grasp while I’ve been away. Obviously I don’t intend to go anywhere near Texas. Found this in a thrift store (look it up) in Dumbo (ditto) and bought a stamp. Fucking love Brooklyn, and am determined to find a way to come back. THIS is where writers live, it turns out, not west London – though not at all clear how they afford it. Weird realisation that apart from you two, no one actually cares where I live or what I do. Does everyone feel like that when they leave uni? Actually miss you both quite a lot (non ironically).

Love

L.

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SUSANNAH CLAPP

Charlie is still very thin but he don’t mind the sun. He says it is all a lark. His friend Ralph is everso good on the banjo. He wrote a song about my hat called “The Jolly Little Tifter”. Please give Ethel the garnit ring Mother left. It is in the cigar box where we put the baby teeth and the hair.

I aint coming back.

Dorothy

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MADELEINE THIEN

my darling,

something has happened. The –– is ongoing and –– do not allow us to ––. They say that all of us are –– and that is why no –– arrives. My darling, I –– you. Beauty leads me to the beautiful, that’s what –– wrote. And I still –– this.

It is cold where you are. Please take care to dress warmly. I –– that you are beside me but where are we then? Some place ––. ––, the colour of my poem. We –– that line, remember? ––, the colour of my poem is ––.

–– celebrated their birthday yesterday. We used the last of the sugar. He

sends his ––. Soon we will be ––.

yours,

––.

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WILL EAVES

Amid all the mayhem, some good news. A robin has come to nest in my back yard, going in and out of the ivy. Dawn is now lodging with me, as you know, and we both saw it the other morning and remarked as one that a robin in such circs means that a relative is trying to make contact, and I said, oh god, no. I think it’s my Dad, said Dawn, and I said the same, because it would be just like him, and she said, well, it can’t be your Dad as well! And I said that there were two robins, only we couldn’t see the other one, and perhaps it was another male and our fathers were having a gay affair in the afterlife, and she said, honestly, I think that’s unlikely. Or it was a female, as per, I said, and her Dad had transitioned. And she said, why is it my Dad that’s transitioned? It could be my Mum, she said. She’s almost dead. And I said, no, my Dad never fancied your Mum. It was your Mum fancied my Dad. Plus if she’s alive as a human she could still get here on the utterly extortionate Hoppa, in theory. Whereas your Dad is already a bird, so how much of a leap can gender reassignment be? I went to Gilding’s on Monday and have put “Untitled #1” on the side. You owe me £161 after taxes/taxis plus £66 for the train (cheapest ticket to Market Harborough). Misery and extortion.

Mike

PS I am joking about the taxis, which as you know are against my religion.

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JULIAN BARNES

Dear Cécile, I’m writing to you in English, even though you won’t understand. My French is as nonexistent as your English. But one day you will read this and know my thoughts and feelings. It surprises me that we get on so well using so few words, mostly gestures and smiles. I found this card specially for you. I hope you don’t prefer this moustachioed Frenchman to your clean-shaven Englishman! Until tomorrow, Pierre (I translated that).

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NATALIE HUME

Dear Mum, Dear Dad,

Everything is really great here. We meet friendly people everywhere and we keep changing our plans because they tell us about cool things we didn’t know about. Last week James left his backpack on the overnight bus so I’m letting him share my toothbrush. It’s fine because he’s almost like my brother at this point. Eddy had a bit of a fall off a motorbike the other day so he’s on crutches, but that’s OK because James can carry his backpack. Max is taking some medicine because he’s been a bit delirious over the last couple of days but he says he’s definitely going to be better for the beach party tomorrow so it can’t be serious. Nothing bad has happened to me yet! Will write again soon.

Love

Brian xx

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These stories appear in Having a Wonderful Time: Postcards that Tell a Story,  published by Redstone Press (£25); theredstoneshop.com

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It may be a simple thing – image on one side, writing on the other – but, as the mini narratives printed here show, a postcard always tells a story. In celebration of this small but mighty form, we invite you to submit an imaginative short story, piece of text, or poem (up to 250 words) in response to a postcard image. The text need not necessarily correspond to the image on the postcard (it may even be more interesting if it doesn’t, as with many of the postcards we do send).

To enter, visit the Redstone website, select a postcard and then submit your entry by the closing date of 1 September 2026: theredstoneshop.com.

The judging panel – authors Julian Barnes, Jan Carson and Ardashir Vakil, and Observer literary editor Tom Gatti – will select three winners who will each receive a prize of £300, a place on an Arvon Foundation online masterclass, and publication of their story in The Observer New Review.

Postcards courtesy of Redstone Press