I think I’ve invented a word.

Pocalog: stands for POst CArd LOG. Similar but different from the original and ubiquitous WeB LOG—my version involves postcards, stamps, moving feet and letterboxes.

Also different from ‘writing postcards’, traditionally done on sunny foreign patios or beaches but can be (and is by me) done anywhere; I’ve got a lovely little stash of postcards, picking them up wherever, from flea markets to art galleries to cheesy souvenir shops and sending them out willy nilly to friends near and far all year round, almost always for no good reason— sometimes with nothing more than a brownie recipe scribbled on the back.

But I digress.

I was meant to be talking about another use for postcards, i.e. pocalogs. The idea being to send a postcard every day, or at regular intervals, just like writing a blog post. Only not endlessly, but for a designated period of time. I’ve only ever done it once—last year I sent a month of pocalogs to my niece, casual blurbs, sometimes with mini quizzes where she could win prizes, which she always won. (Google has made quizzes kind of pointless…)

So this year, because it went over so well and it seems to want to become a tradition (albeit reserved only for her), I’m doing her a pocalog of 31 ‘postcard’ stories for her birthday (plus a *donkey).

God bless technology but at the end of the day it’s such lovely nonsense that makes my world go round.

That and chocolate.

‘Stanley’s Shoes’

Stanley the alligator lived in a Florida swamp next to a house inside which lived a mean and miserable, crusty old Florida man of at least thirty-five, whose goal in life was to shoot Stanley and make a pair of shoes with his hide. But one day in his mean and crusty exuberance the man fell into the swamp with his mean and trusty rifle.

Sometime afterwards the other alligators in Stanley’s swamp said, Hey, Stanley, are those new shoes you’re wearing?

Heavens no, Stanley replied. Why, they’re at least thirty-five years old.

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*Just to be clear, not a donkey for the garden (although I understand they make excellent watch dogs) but a sponsored one from The Donkey Sanctuary that she can visit. Her mother will be relieved.

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