rARsh!

Fifty pence? To send a postcard? Are you serious?

It all came from a chance mention in an MetaFilter thread some time last week. The poster mentioned “postcrossing” and I was intrigued enough to find out what this means.

I found PostCrossing.com and thought it a good idea. A bit of harmless fun, in fact. Off I went to PhotoBox and ordered some of my photos made up as postcards then, when they arrived this morning, signed up at the website. You can have five cards in transit at a time (once a card’s received it’s logged and you’re then allowed to send another). In return, each time one of your cards arrives your name and address will be given to one of the next people to ask for a random recipient. It’s a sort of random chain letter thing, you see.

Anyway, five postcards duly selected and written, off I trundled to the post office. I’m sure the destinations are all random but for some reason three of my five addressees are in Finland (the other two heading for Belgium and the USA).

“That’ll be fifty pence”, I was told. “Each.”

Fifty pence to send a postcard? When did it get that expensive? I can remember being amazed at the cost of sending postcards from Norway a couple of years ago but hadn’t realised that the cost of sending cards had got so dear from the UK too.

Mind you, it’s going to be fun to get my five random postcards in return. It’ll also be fun to see which ones arrive first.