Post Card Competition Winners

Winner

Betty Dear

By Pauline Howe

Dear Betty – found a place at last. Two miles away – a farm with lots of land. In disrepair but owner has agreed to rent for indefinite time. Rental ran out at cottage and Phil’s applied for several jobs. Court hearing to be held in July – hope things’ll pick up after that. Farm address to follow (not sure what it is yet), it’s in the middle of nowhere. Almost packed and van arranged – talk about last minute! Soon as we’re sorted please come over and stay – the house is huge, ten bedrooms (I’ll clean them up before you get here). The farm’s not been used for years, but the land is let to someone else, so it looks busy even though it’s deserted. Another stop-gat till Phil sorts something out. A good place for all the guns if nothing else. I’ll phone soon as we’re in. See you soon.

Runner-Up

‘Rounding Cape Horn’ by Peter Rolls

‘Car Park’ by Michelle Shine

It’s been such a long time since anyone paid attention to me in that way. I was standing in the car park next to my car scrabbling in my handbag for my keys when I heard someone calling ‘Wait!’

I looked up to find a handsome young man with his coat and scarf flapping as he ran towards me. I stopped in my tracks.

‘I’m sorry.’ He apologised. ‘I couldn’t let the moment pass and not cme over to make your acquaintance.’

‘How charming.’ I said in reply.

As I was poised with my key in the lock, he pressed his body close to mine and leaned over me.

‘Please let me help you.’ He stated.

‘Thank you.’ I replied with a secret smile.

When I arrived home I discovered my wallet was missing; fortunately, he’d been very busy that day, I knew, because I had his.

'Baggage' by Jenny Baldwin

Untitled by Charlotte Judet

I don’t know where you live but I know you’ve been here. Yesterday three things happened: A boy fell, a woman turned and an old man sighed a thousand dreams. The old man walked through the park almost every day, often thinking about the past ­– people known, lost and remembered – but the boy was a stranger to its plane trees and daffodils. When he fell the woman turned and walked towards him, asking if he was ok. And that’s when, I, the old man, was struck dumb as my past collided with the present. I will pin this postcard to the tree where I braced myself, winded by the sight of you after all those years, in the hope that you’ll pass this way again and my wrinkled heart will beat with the vigour of my youth once more.

Untitled by Carmen Ali

Dear Grandma

I hope you’re in a happy place now. I wish I could see you again. I wish I could ask you more about your life. I wish I could get to know you more. I wish I could listen to stories of what it was like when you were younger.

I wish I could tell you that I don’t dance in clubs anymore – I have a day job and I’m training to be a dance teacher part time. I wish you could be proud of me.

I will always remember that day when you took me to see the Cathedrals and how beautiful they were.

I love you.

Carmen.

‘Dear Sigmund’ by James Hogwood

Dear Sigmund Freud,

I’ve wanted to write to you for a very long time. I don’t know how, or when or where I was when it first came to me. I just know that I had to ask you. My question is this.

When a patient submits their dreams to you for analysis, or you seek to understand a slip of the tongue, or an act of forgetting, what is it that occurs inside you?

When you mine into someone’s soul, and surface its minerals for the world to consume, does it enrich your own? Does it chip away at some rocky essence from inside you? Or, like the contents of a museum, does it answer some barely acknowledged lack within you?

Yours sincerely,

James

Untitled by Wendy Schreder

Dear Kathleen

My mum said my smile would be my downfall.

Now I sit awaiting my fate in a squalid room somewhere in England. Punished so harshly for a smile. How could they do that to me, Kelly? My own uncle and brother too; I saw you trying to defend me, I pray to Mary, Mother of God that they didn't hurt you.

Did I know he was a Black and Tan? I cannot lie, I suppose so but all I saw was a shy boy who looked frightened so I smiled.

'They' my own people came for me, pushed my Ma over, hooded me and dragged me to the square. The rest you know. How will I and my family live with the shame? I can never come back. The smell of the tar stays with me and my poor hair is gone. His regiment shipped me here and today they say I must marry him. I won’t recognise him, only his smile.

God Bless You My Friend.

I shall never forget you.

Lillian

Untitled by Angela Pressland

June 2009

Remember this place? August Bank Holiday Monday, 1998. Barely any sand visible. Just bodies. White, flabby, greased with Soltan, roasting on threadbare towels. You and him were by the kiosk. Cigarettes and pasties. Warm, flat lager in Styrofoam cups. He'd had that tattoo on his pimply shoulder: Mick and Carol forever. Seemed this one planned on sticking around...

I didn't like his hairy back. The way he leered while picking pastry crumbs off your bikini. The way he shouted I should clear off. Go play in the sea. Now! Wouldn't even let me find my flip-flops... You knew I hated the shingle, the seaweed. Him. But you did nothing.

They were childless, caring – the couple who took me. I went willingly. From miles away I watched your pathetic TV appeals dry-eyed. But today we've come back. My eighteenth birthday – family outing. Weather's lovely. Glad you're not here.

Kayla

‘South Stack Lighthouse’ by Jenny Jones

‘You’re Invited’ by Emma Pearson

I wish you would come to the funeral.

Mum was adamant what she wanted. Everyone she ever knew had to be there, “even that bore, Penny.” I think half of the reason she went to bingo was so she could rub Penelope up the wrong way. I told her it wasn’t nice, but she just laughed—“I’m too old to take myself seriously anymore, dear, Penny should be the same.”

If she wanted Penelope there, she’d want you there, too.

I know Mum has—had—a way of making people nervous. She even managed to do it in her funeral arrangements—another caveat of her burial is that everyone had to be in their best clothes. I’ll be sweating in my beaded amber finery, the same dress I wore when I told Mum Michael and I were engaged. He won’t come, either.

Don’t I deserve my brother by my side?

‘Dear Violet’ by Julia Wainwright

Dear Violet,

Leaving this in the usual place in the garden.

I keep wondering how you're finding things. Must have been difficult. But I know you, you pick things up so quickly. I expect you've got yourself a mobile phone or something now. Hard to imagine!

I don't even know if you're reading these postcards, and by the time they reach you... Anyway. Hope someone's looked after the house! And your garden. I'm looking after it now, although not as well as you did. It's spring here and now. Your tulips are out and they stand up as straight and tall as ever, like bright red sentinels in the sunshine. The sky is as blue as June.

I'm touching the cracked paving stone next to the fountain, imagining your hand there too.

I wish I knew the way back.

Love, Neil x