The Diminishing Art Of Postage

An obsession with things philatelic

(Please note: I’ve updated the original post to include a video about how I used Pigeon Posted)

I discovered to my great surprise the other day that, here in Australia, they still sell aerogrammes at the post office. At A$3.00 it’s the cheapest way to send a letter overseas. I remember when I first came to this country as a student in the 1980s, living far away from home, I treasured the arrival of a weekly blue aerogramme from the parents in Dad’s neat typing (Olivetti) with a bit of his tidy handwriting at the end of the letter. Other times he’d send a brown envelope containing a typed letter and cuttings from the newspaper. Sometimes, in her messy, manic hand-writing, Mum would add a note at the bottom with lots of xxxxx.

Apart from aerogrammes you can buy a growing range of philatelic products (Is it me, or is there something about the words philatelic products?) I learned this from standing in a post office queue. I love to use Express Post satchels which are quite pricey, but now there are a whole range of prepaid products so that once you buy them, you can post these anywhere without having to go back into the post office.

I’m known for ordering second hand books from overseas. Then, I forget that I ordered them because it takes at least 2 -3 weeks to arrive, sometimes longer. This is what happens when you live at the ‘arse end of the world’ as one of our former treasurers famously put it. Suddenly this little rectangular miracle is in your hands and a rush of joy fills you as you recall what you ordered in that precious moment of surprise.

Speaking of philatelic products, I’ve recently starting sending post-cards again and I try to look for interesting places from which to post them from so I get the unique post-office stamp saying where the card came from and it’s postcode. For example, I was recently in Penguin, Tasmania. Yes, the town is really called Penguin, because Little Penguins live along the coast there. It brought me joy to queue (briefly) at the Penguin Post Office and watch the nice lady manually stamp "Penguin 7316” onto my postcards.

Jane at Penguin, Tasmania (photo Sammy Read)

On an aside, good postcards are increasingly hard to find, but this is not a topic I’m going to dwell on today.

I recently discovered some letter-writing stationery, a single sheet of A4 which you can fold in an origami-like way, address it and pop a stamp on it. It’s made by a British company called Pigeon Post: The Letter. Reinvented. Write. Fold. Send. The blurb on the back of the package says “because even with all our hi-tech wizardry, nobody has managed to recreate the magic and joy of the hand-written letter.”

[I am making a video for next week’s newsletter. The link will go here!]

When I was little, my grandmother sent us little squares of tapestry art which she included inside our birthday, Easter and Christmas cards. I kept a few of her mini tapestries and they are treasured. [I will try to put some pictures in, but as you can probably tell, this newsletter was a bit of a rush job] Apart from the surprise of receiving a real letter (as opposed to the rubbish that usually fills a post-box) I think what I love most about letters is the handwriting and typing. Remember typing on a typewriter? You’d have to really press down on the QWERTY keyboard to get an impression.

And of course, what a letter is really all about is a story. When someone sends a letter, they have to stop what they are doing, decide how to deliver their news or deliberately download their thoughts, craft them into at least two sentences, buy a stamp, write the address, seal the envelope and post it. Ahhh, what a simple pleasure! When was the last time you felt that way about an email?

Don’t get me wrong. I loves me technology. I’m all for instant gratification and the dopamine hit of a ‘restack’. But I hope I never lose my joy of writing, receiving and posting letters.

Have a lovely weekend, friends. As always, send me your thoughts. PS There’s only one more week to sign up to my three family story workshops which start on 30 May Australian time. Please join us!