Wish you were here? There’s a good reason no one sends postcards any more

As one British seafront shop owner admits he now only sells one postcard a month, has the price of stamps killed off this glorious tradition? I hope so, says Flic Everett

Postcards were once a signifier of status – as long as they came from abroad (AFP/Getty)

When I was a child, we used to go to Llandudno on holiday, and almost every shop had a rotating postcard display outside. They ranged from “saucy” imitators of Donald McGill – showing blonde bimbos with breasts like torpedos falling out of skimpy nighties to landscapes in heightened, uncanny-valley colours – to comedy: there was always an entirely black one captioned “Conwy at night”. How we didn’t laugh.

So it’s no wonder that the holiday postcard is in its death throes, tossing out only the occasional image of beleaguered seaside donkeys or head-scarfed 1950s battleaxes as it struggles.

Now, tourist shop owner Daniel Lumb, who runs the No 1 Rock and Gift Shop in Bridlington, has admitted that for tourists, sending postcards is “a thing of the past”, adding that he’s lucky to sell one postcard a month. He didn’t add “…and that’s to the over-90s”, but it’s probably true.

I live in a beautiful part of the West Highlands, where several gift shops still have the old postcard carousel showing off tired images of lochs and castles. I also have at least 200 pictures of said lochs and castles on my iPhone, which I can post on social media whenever I like – for nothing. And so does anyone who’s visited in the last 20 years.

Besides, not only do you have to buy and post them, you also have to write them. Everyone remembers their parents ploughing through a stack of postcards like Sunday-night homework, two days into the holiday: “Do you think Jean’d like one of Bodnant Gardens or the prom at night?”, then puzzling miserably over what to write. “I’ve already said it’s raining and we got ripped off at the amusement arcade, now what?”

Aside from the dismal British tradition of alerting the neighbours to your week in Skegness, (with a pricey box of fudge depicting beauty spots for the cat-sitter), postcards were once also a signifier of status – as long as they came from abroad.

When package holidays got going in the early Seventies, the arrival of a postcard swiftly went from “Oh, poor Doris, it’s not stopped drizzling in Keswick”, to an envious “Pam says Torremolinos is boiling and they’ve had a paella buffet at the hotel”.

Postcards from abroad became a licence to show off to friends, colleagues and neighbours, as long as you were prepared to crouch over a stack of “traditional donkey herder, Paxos” laboriously writing out “Glorious sunshine, wish you were here” 17 times – and then find a postbox.

Nowadays, thankfully, you can scroll past the photo, rather than shove it guiltily in the kitchen drawer – plus, for the show-off, it’s cheaper.

To send 10 postcards first class today would now cost £13.50 in stamps (and a not-insubstantial £8.50 for second class). Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Royal Mail is being investigated by its regulator after failing to meet its delivery targets for a second year running. Only three-quarters of first-class post now gets there the next day, despite the asking price. Why would you bother risking a seaside postcard when you can simply hashtag #andrelax #todaysoffice #notabadviewforamondaymorning and annoy everyone you know at once?

There is one sort of postcard, however, that retains its charm: the vintage kind. There are thousands of postcard collectors – “deltiologists”, for the nerds – and for a while, when I owned a vintage boutique, I was one. Not for the guileless depictions of Scottish dancers, or vivid renderings of Nuneaton Precinct, but for the messages, which provide a flickbook of social history, from the way families addressed each other in 1907 (“Dearest Aunt Bessie, I do hope you are improved”) to plaintive cries from the 1960s. (“Dear Mum, I’m visiting Pete in Cambridge and down to my last 2/6 – could you send a postal order?”)

Vintage postcards are casual messages straight from history, and very much worth keeping. For everything else, there’s Instagram.