Noon. Please. Will meet you.

No time to waste this week. Written as spoken, our sender's in a rush. His (?) words spill out in a garbled order: Time, courtesy, direction. Stamped at an angle. Signed off with initials.

Or maybe not.

Is in fact the delivery deliberately slow and enigmatic? Are the pauses merely for effect, to give the impression of being in complete control. And standing back, the card does seem perfectly balanced - was it even the first attempt at the message?

Authenticity

Collecting postcard messages is no easy pursuit. For one thing, your eyes boggle after an hour or so of going through trays at postcard fairs.

To cope, there are a few rules you can follow to make the sifting easier.

For me, Rule #1 is any card worth buying must be stamped and have a postmark. This way at least you know that the card was sent. OK you can't be sure that it was read by the addressee. But it gives weight to the idea that the message was part of a real dialogue.

Not only does this week's card have a stamp and a postmark - it also has some smudged ink, bringing to life even more the physical act of putting pen to card.