Postcards
Friday, 22 August 2014Remember postcards? A rectangle of cardboard with a picture. We used to send them to people, way back before emails and text messages and Facebook and Instagram. Well I still do regularly send postcards – to my mother (pushing 90) and to Maureen’s aunt (sailed past 90).
But it’s getting increasingly difficult. First it’s getting harder to find the postcards – although I had no problem in France, Italy, Turkey, Malaysia and even Dubai in the UAE recently. Then you have to get stamps, which can be even more difficult than the postcard. In Greece I failed, got the cards, couldn’t get the stamps because it was the weekend and the post offices were closed.
And then you have to find somewhere to mail them. Is there a postbox/mailbox at LAX – Los Angeles International Airport? I had the cards and stamps, this was the last chance to mail them before I flew out.
‘There are no mailboxes anywhere at the airport,’ I was told at the information desk at Terminal 4 where I arrived. ‘They closed them all for security reasons.’
‘There isn’t one here,’ I was told at the Tom Bradley International Terminal (I was flying to Australia), ‘there may be a mailbox at Terminal 2, but I don’t think so.’
‘Not here,’ the Terminal 3 info desk told me, so I marched on to Terminal 2. I was getting the complete LAX tour between flights. ‘There may be one near the Starbucks,’ the nice woman at the Terminal 2 desk told me. ‘I don’t think it’s there anymore, but at least you can get a coffee.’
I continued on and there was a cabinet of mail delivery boxes for airlines – Air Canada, Air China, Air France and assorted other airlines (why way over here in Terminal 2?) and a subtle little slot labelled ‘Outgoing Mail’. I hope it worked.
▲ Flying in to LAX half an hour earlier I had a magic moment. Right beside my American Airlines 737, coming in to the parallel runway, was a British Airlines double decker Airbus A380. LA sunset, final approach, undercarriage about come down, wonderful!
