Is it July? I’ve just done the fair at Nottingham, wearing a thermal vest and winter woollies, where I’d normally be wearing nothing more than a T-shirt. In addition to the clouds pouring rain on us, as we packed and unpacked the car, there was another one on the horizon, in that a regular neighbouring dealer, Helen Prescott, from Wigan, was absent, having had her car broken into and all her stock taken (30,000 cards). Do get in touch, if you hear of anything suspicious. The raid must have been well organised, rather than an opportunist smash and grab, so the cards could be anywhere by now.

Looking through a 50p box, at Nottingham, I came across a card I’d have paid pounds for, showing boys playing in a stream at Barrowford, just a couple of miles from here – presumably at a time when the weather was warmer than this! Although classified as a village, it covers a large area, and includes a college, several mills, factories and pubs, a large park, a museum and a good range of shops, and yet I’ve only ever managed to accumulate a couple of dozen cards of it, compared with hundreds of Nelson, and many of much smaller local villages. There was a bad flood there in the 60’s, when the stream shown, became a torrent about 6 ft. deep, and broke it’s banks, carrying away cars and shops and houses from the adjacent main road, as well as flooding other houses to a height of several feet. It could be that many accumulations of cards were lost at that stage. Alternatively, it could be simply that few cards were published there. It certainly seems to be the case that postcards of some places are harder to find.

I’ve been asked to try and sell a complete set of Picture Postcard Monthly magazines, dating back to about 1980, and some books about postcards. These could be very useful to someone who has just started collecting, as there is a vast amount of information in the articles, even if the news pages are out of date. Let me know if you are interested, but the buyer will need to collect from somewhere Up North.