Summer holidays bring with them a crop of postcards from all our friends, who like to make us envious of the good times they are having. We get views of the swimming pool at Mudbank-on-Sea, the promenade deck of s.s. Utopia, the chalet "where we stayed a night while climbing Mount Blanc", and the post-office of the hamlet of Anywhere.
Then we in our turn go off somewhere and return cards to all those who sent us one. It is a curious custom, this.
One of the hardest things to write is a postcard. The two-by-four space for correspondence is either too small when you have something to say or, when you are merely trying to fill up space, it seems infinite.
There is the writer who scrawls, "Having a grand time" right across the back, and the other type, which writes in microscopic script in every conceivable corner and at every angle, making it quite impossible to decipher the message.
Then there is the idiot who sends a card asking you to send on something, but forgetting to put his address at the top.
Some of these cards are very nicely finished, particularly the continental ones - I have in mind a couple I received this year from Savoy of the Lac d'Annecy. At the other end of the scale, we have the dismal promenade type, taken in the late 19th-century, with the fashionable holiday-makers airing their tall hats and long dresses.
Then there is that type of card mysteriously called "humorous" - but now we are in the realms of art, and it is not for me to pass comment.
The Irish Times, September 2nd, 1939.