“THANKS for the postcard,” said my former colleague in the Journal newsroom, sounding faintly bemused. “I didn’t know you’d been in Italy.”

“I haven’t,” I replied. “Well, not for two years anyway. But funny you should mention it, because yesterday a card turned up at home that I posted on that same trip.”

It was addressed to our dog. “Woof !” it said. “I hope Uncle Al is looking after you.” At the time it seemed mildly amusing.

On Friday, my recently widowed mother rang up. You guessed it.

“Thanks for the card,” she said, laughing (luckily for me). “It arrived this morning, addressed to both of us.”

At least now she knows I really didn’t forget to send one.

I remember giving the wodge of cards to our friend to post in a lovely little hilltop town in Abruzzo. He didn’t speak any Italian but assured me that after some searching he’d found a postbox.

When they failed to arrive I assumed, rather patronisingly, that he’d popped them into some other, misleadingly similar receptacle - perhaps someone’s household mailbox. But no, obviously I underestimated him (sorry, Malcs) and the fault must have lain with the Italian mail system, which postmarked all three cards last Monday.

Their arrival set me thinking about many things that have changed since that holiday.

For starters, on the card to the office, I joked about letting my diet slip. I’d just lost a stone. Now it has returned with interest, and I can hardly blame the Italian pasta-fest after all this time.

And gone, like my waistline, are the days of gaily scribbling a lighthearted message on a card and bunging it in a letter box without a second thought.

Thanks to rocketing prices, my Christmas mailing list this year will be a drastically slimmed-down affair, consisting only of our farthestflung friends and relatives.

You know you’re getting old when you hear yourself say: “How much? 50p for a stamp? That’s ridiculous.”

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