YP Letters: Postcards get the stamp of approval

I READ Elizabeth Anderson’s article (The Yorkshire Post, July 4) on sending postcards with considerable interest. I use postcards a lot for purposes of communication whether I be on holiday, on a day trip or by way of general correspondence.

My friends and family have finally buckled under the guilt trip and I am now the grateful recipient of postcards from various people from all over the world.

My own opinion is that the decrease in the numbers of postcards being mailed is a two-fold decline: firstly, mobile phones and computers enable people to email holiday snaps to recipients and several snaps can be made available on a holiday blog: secondly, the cost can be prohibitive.

When abroad, I sometimes mail postcards to family and friends living in the US and Europe as the postage rate is comparable to that of the UK, usually cheaper. I usually mail my postcards for UK residents when I get back home, second class, having written the cards abroad.

It is considerably cheaper and there is a good chance that the postcards will reach their destination quite quickly. Bad experiences in the past of mailing postcards abroad at greater cost, and them taking weeks to reach destination or not arriving at all, have left me wiser and cannier.

Like Elizabeth Anderson’s boyfriend, I mail a lot of postcards resulting from a holiday – perhaps as many as 30. How Elizabeth Anderson has arrived at no more than £1 for the cost of a basic postcard, I don’t know.

I expect to be able to mail a postcard with postage at an average cost of no more than £1. Considering the number of postcards I send, you can calculate for yourself that the cost makes a considerable hole in my holiday money.

With the rising cost of postcards and UK postage, I continue to gradually prune my postcard list but I know how much recipients enjoy receiving the cards and, like Elizabeth Anderson, those I receive remain on display at home for weeks and are then retained in boxes.

The May 10 issue of The Yorkshire Post included an article on “Postcards from Paradise...”, asking people around the word to send postcards to a young Yorkshire girl, Jessie Stocks, who had been in hospital for 17 months being treated for leukaemia.

A further article highlighted that hundreds of postcards were reaching her on a daily basis from all over the world.

I hope that people’s kindness and generosity in sending the cards have encouraged them to extend this practice to their own family and friends.

From: Martin J Dodgson, Thwing.

THREE cheers I say for Elizabeth Anderson and her article related to sending postcards.

There is great pleasure in sending a card and equal pleasure in receiving... and one important reason is that they are handwritten.

I take with me on holiday envelopes already addressed to my ‘ regulars’ which enables me to write a longer message on the card.

I also take with me our address book in case I see an appropriate card which reminds me of someone else.

The article mentions godparents. I am now 75 and continue to enjoy sending a postcard to my godmother, aged 98. We both still appreciate and value the exchange. Now what has happened to the practice and art of letter writing?

A lack of facilities

From: Jeremy Whittington, Easterly Road, Leeds.

EVERY Sunday over 300 people take their own chairs or sit on council benches in Wetherby from 1.30-4.30pm to listen to the visiting brass bands and there are no toilets of any kind.

Leeds City Council should be ashamed of themselves. Where should we all go to the toilet?

In the 21st century there are such things as chemical toilets. The Riverside car park is often full to bursting and we, the general public, get there by 1.30pm to get a seat or a spot to put one’s own chairs to listen to the visiting bands.

It is quite disgusting that the council does not provide chemical toilets. A disgraceful state of affairs.

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

LEEDS’s “vibrant visitor economy” is excellent news for the city and surrounding area (The Yorkshire Post, July 3).

The city council must be commended for their foresight in encouraging and enabling this. That said, why does this same council condemn a major European city to absolute reliance on buses for local transport?

Perhaps the city’s application to be European Capital of Culture 2023 could include painting the buses green, bringing back conductors and inviting visitors to go juddering down memory lane, back to the 1960s?

Pressures of the Prom

From: Diana Priestley, The Parkway, Darley Dale.

SARAH Todd always talks sense but never more so than on the stress caused by the School Prom (Life & Style, The Yorkshire Post, June 28).

Exam pressure, after all, is under your control in that you decide how much work/revision you do. This is nothing to the peer pressure of the dress, shoes, car and, of course, date required to pass successfully the social test of the Prom. Thank God we never had one!

Strangely enough, The Yorkshire Post had a recent piece about the need for mental health experts to be available in secondary schools.

Could there possibly be a connection?

What a ghastly American idea is the popularity contest called “Prom King and Queen” in which everyone else is a loser.

Far better to be realistic about life as Sarah’s daughter seems to be. Good luck to her.