Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are comedian and author MARK WATSON (The Knot, Hotel Alpha, The Place That Didn’t Exist) and journalist and broadcaster TIMANDRA HARKNESS (Big Data). In this episode we ponder postcard messages as an unreliable dataset, miniature sea-battles, and the transience of all things except, apparently, little cardboard rectangles. And Timandra gets a chance to tick ‘appearing on a postcard-related podcast’ off her new year list for 2018. Please charge your glasses and mobile phones. Wish you were here?
“Colin of course walks ridiculously fast – always.”
“Sorry if I sounded miserable in letter but had had a visit from Dotty P. wanting to know if I would like Geoff back. I told her once again no, not even over my dead body.
“When we get home again we are going to look for a puppy for me. Charles not so keen.”
“Hope you are enjoying hols. I aren’t.”
Timandra’s card of Jean Gabin in Le Grand Illusion – but what were numbers 22 and 21 on her New Year’s list?
Memories within memories: a card from Moscow sent by Timandra to her mother, echoing her mother’s own earlier trip to Russia
A memento of Mark’s wedding, frozen on a postcard sent by his toastmaster in 2006. Already the mobile phone is dated.
Mark’s junk shop find, a postcard from Hong Kong in 1965: “Had a bad bout of dysentery but recovered now.”
A card picked up by Mark in a junk shop, sent in 1991: “Dear George, thank you for your card. By now your examination will be behind you. What happens next?”
