Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are writers Emma Flint (Little Deaths) and Edward Parnell (Ghostland). We get a breeze in to cover our unease and anxiety, visit Stonehenge and London Airport, head to Kensington with a Frenchman we met at the airport, risk a pair of harem trousers and consider what goes on behind the net curtains. It’s life, sliced up. Lace up your green trainers and try Bournemouth for the autumn tan. Wish you were here?

St Paul’s Cathedral, 8 November 1972, “WE ARE STILL AT THE AIRPORT DUE TO FOG – 12 HOURS AFTER WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT – WE HOPE TO GET AWAY SOON! LUCKERLY WE MET A FRENCHMAN WHO TOOK US TO HIS FLAT IN KENSINGTON FOR THE NIGHT – OTHERS HAD TO SLEEP IN THE AIRPORT.”
A Lifeguards man on Duty, Whitehall, 10 August 1964. “Thank you so much for Saturday. Need I say more than I never had a more wonderful time.”
Emma’s postcard from the Scottish Poetry Library. Can green trainers unlock creative freedom? Or can a postcard of green trainers inspire a truer writing style?
Stonehenge. A postcard sent by Ed’s mother on her honeymoon.
Photographs of Stonehenge from that honeymoon trip, as featured in Ed’s book, “Ghostland.”
London Airport at Dusk, “Planes are leaving London Airport continuously so I’m sure it must be the safest way to travel. We saw one leave for Majorca but not Ibiza. It was quite an experience to visit the airport. We have also been to the Zoo, Hampton Court and Crystal palace. Rather a hectic holiday but it makes a change!”
Emma’s postcard of a 1993 painting by Avril Paton, “Windows in the West” (Kelvingrove Gallery). Every window tells a story, one of them yours.
A vintage postcard bought by Ed. An artist-drawn card by Fred Spurgin, posted in 1911, the caption pokes fun at the fashion for harem pants…
… but the message is more cryptic.
Jerusalem Street, Warsaw by night: a musical postcard.