keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn

g'day

and so a bit more from my accidental travels to the south east, look you see. to a place which, i suppose, came to be the south east by an accidental quirk of geography and all that. well, this is kind of about them travels. more so the travel of an item to a place what is even more south than the south east of England, and believe me yes, such does (indeed) exist. 

being one for tradition or indeed, i yield to the accusation, doing things that i have always done out of a sense of old fashioned but still makes sense, invariably on my travels i shall seek out and send postcards. a particularly distressing episode of my life came in the form of Dudley, where i could not find a single postcard of the place. when i expressed my torment at such to one shop proprietor, they explained that Dudley "wasn't really a tourist destination". that shall teach me not to go to Tipton instead, which i should have considering how fondly The Viz speaks of the place.  

moving back to places which do have postcards then, and i am (genuinely) delighted to say that there are an abundance of them available across the south east. well, the places of the south east where i went, which according to my google maps tracker thing (that i cannot recall switching on but anyway) is quite a few. not just the beach or coast bits, either, but also Canterbury. or, at least, Canterbury Cathedral. 

that there above is a postcard of Canterbury Cathedral what i tried to send to my sister, and indeed her whole family. well, did send, i suppose, and with some success. if only partial. as you can see, it certainly landed, in a way which was repackaged by New Zealand mail, or whatever it is the postal service down there calls itself. oh, it says in big letters New Zealand Post, now that i look, so my guess is that is what they call themselves. 

note, with interest, the non-traditional way in which the postcard arrived. this i take it as an effort by NZP (initials for New Zealand Post, so as to save some time) to make amends for their disgrace. oh yes, i do mean their disgrace. the postcard most certainly did not look like that when i sent it. also, Mum & Dad got theirs in a way that was undamaged.

what i like most about the extra packaging added to (presumably) protect the postcard from any further damage is the reason why such was necessary. they have, as i think you can see, a list of reasons as to why an item may be damaged. it is the rather non-committal nature of the red tick they have put on it, not being clear as to which reason they cite, which impresses me the most. mostly it looks like they are trying to suggest there was "insufficient packaging" in place. well, what packaging is normal for a postcard, exactly?

yes, the above image (a selfie, no less) exists purely to confirm the provenance of the postcard. if you for some reason were wondering where, exactly, it was that i obtained a postcard of Canterbury Cathedral from, then i am happy to state that i did indeed acquire such from within the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. this i would have thought would be obvious, but no matter, happy to set the record straight. 

of course also, yes, it was by complete accident that i ended up in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. well, that or someone engineered it for me to be so, and for what reason they would do this i would not care to speculate about. but yes, i did attend under escort of some security types. this - being escorted in, around, about and out of premises by security staff - has indeed become something of a regular trend for me in the middle to business end parts of 2020. no, not by choice. 

do i have any thoughts, reflections or comments on Canterbury Cathedral? well, the aspects i saw were truly magnificent, and yes i would endorse any trip one could make to see. unfortunately i was not given quite so much time as perhaps one may have liked to consider the structure, what with me needing to do other things, and indeed the security i mentioned earlier being particularly keen, if not eager, for me to leave. 

in the above image you can get a greater sense of the damage done to the postcard. from what i can tell, some 15% - 20% of the card was quite nearly torn off. as point of fact on the reverse of that part, i think, was where i had attached an address sticker, all typed, so as to save the postal staff from a (presumably most ardent) wrestling match with my handwriting. maybe it is the sticker, as a quasi form of divine intervention, which held the card all together. 

presumably this card got knacked in one of their extravagant, sophisticated mail sorting machines. or, maybe, an easily provoked staff member of NZP (which is New Zealand Post) was quite angry with god for some reason or other, and believed that they were making an ill advised strike back at him by damaging this card. for what reason they would have been so angry is something i could not possibly speculate about, but i would rather have wished they left me, my sister, her family and (specifically) this postcard out of the quarrel, thank you.

well, anyway, i am off to go and find some people who(m) i disagree with on certain subjects and accuse them of being French (or similar). 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!