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| Paul Gaywood and Pauline Harrison |
Postcards tire me out. Whenever I think that's it, there's no more, I get them, time to move on, a story comes out of the blue that starts the fascination all over again.
In July, I was invited to speak at the Red Rose Postcard Club in Preston. Having grown up in Preston, I was keen to make the trip.
On the night, after reading out a few of my articles - Preston deltiologists are an obliging sort - I asked if anyone had found any interesting cards recently.
Pretty much in unison the club shouted back at me "Pauline has!"
And indeed Pauline Harrison - longtime member of the club and pictured above with chairman Paul - had come across a very special card.
She'd found it at one of the club's postcard fairs, one of the fairs at which she sits by the front desk taking people's entrance money.
A collector of postcards of King's Lynn in Norfolk, that day Pauline had not been in the mood for looking through cards. (Reader, it happens.) In fact, with no more people arriving, she was ready to go home.
Then, at the last minute she decided to look at the cards of a dealer she didn't recognise. The dealer wasn't a regular at the fair. And there, at the stall, much to her delight, she found a photo postcard of King's Lynn.
So what?
Well, her grandfather was on it.
I said, HER GRANDFATHER WAS ON IT!
Each year the club runs a competition where members show off cards from their collections.
Brilliantly, here is her competition board....
P.S. A story for another day: for many years Pauline was a Tiller Girl at the London Palladium.
