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my REAL tree tribute in Exmoor

Just recently Boo Cartledge sent me notice that she had created a REAL tree with postcards on.

It seems I'm now playing catchup...

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my REAL Roman Bath 1 - Around the world

A while back, I decided to widen out the scope of my REAL wall a little and posted an ad on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum, to get some more cool postcards from around the world from lovely travelling people.

Today, I got my first one back in an envelope from someone called Serena, who send a tea picking pic from Kerala, South India. A lovely place it is too, I was there myself in 2007 with the Dosa Boys and loved it.

Serena's postcard is displayed here in Bath above the historic Roman baths, not too far away from her house actually. Hope you're having a great holiday Serena, and keep 'em coming!

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my REAL Roman Bath 2


my REAL Roman Bath 2, originally uploaded by andytgeezer.

Finally, after what seems like a year without a break (ok it was about 2 months) me and Elena finally got some "Us time" and decided to hire a car for the first time ever!

I only passed my driving test 6 months ago, and haven't driven since then, so we really should have taken it easy, but we decided to head out of London to the West Country, trying to get deep into Devon and Cornwall.

As we only had 4 days and a hire car, we couldn't push too far, but our first stop was Bath, a beautiful little city in Somerset.

The most famous thing about Bath is the Roman baths, after which the city takes it's name. Legend has it that these were founded by Prince Bladud, son of King Lear, the dude that Shakespeare wrote about. He came back from Greece with leprosy and, after seeing some pigs bathing in hot mud and realising that they had no skin conditions, he decided to bath in the stuff himself and was cured of leprosy. He then went on to set up the city of Bath and had the baths of Aquae Sulis at the centre of it all.

For me as a paraglider, the legend of Bladud has a more interesting side. Apparently a fan of necromancy, Bladud also constructed a pair of wings for himself and tried to fly from London to Greece.

He didn't get that far, as he hit a REAL wall and fell and broke his neck.

So, in tribute to Bladud, whose likeness you can see, just behind Richard Canard's postcard, here's today's REAL wall over the historic Roman baths at Bath.

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my REAL wall - 24 March 2010 - We have a winner!

I've been extremely busy lately and so post action has dropped in the month of March quite significantly. Understandably with the amount of post outgoing dropping this month, this means that the amount of post coming in has dropped too, so I'm even more happy to see post appearing in the mailbox as I feel kinda undeserving.

One of the most awesome constant contributors features prominently on the wall today. Okadascat has put together an awesome "Hello to the fish" artwork, which is a very delicate piece and is going up to replace Heleens landscape on the aquarium later today. Me and Elena were bouncing up and down when we received this.

My new favourite though, comes from the mysterious Richard Canard. I don't think I've got around to sending him anything yet either, but he has 2 new pieces up on my REAL wall today, one being my favourite and another card announcing that another card is on it's way. I've never really understood that idea of announcing that another letter is on the way, but it does always make me smile. Anyone know where I can find the rest of Richard Canard's work? I only ever find him on other people's mailart collections.

The final one worth a mention today, really does make me feel undeserving, and comes from someone called K Ross, from Yorkshire.

The reason that I feel undeserving, is because I am actually undeserving of this card.

Here's a little background about how my PO Box works. At the start of the year I paid a fee for the PO Box, which meant that the Post Office would set aside a little box for me with my name on it. For twice the price they would deliver it to my house every day.

Now I had assumed that the Post Office would have some awesome system by which the redirect would take place, but in actual fact what happens is that when your mail arrives in my PO Box, some little guy in the Post Office, crosses out the address and writes my REAL address on it by hand in pen! This is why some addresses on cards are blurred out or have convenient stickers over them, despite having a PO Box!

As for the card from K Ross, this was a competition entry addressed to PO Box 54209, and the Post Office, seeing that it was a cool looking card, crossed out "PO Box 54209" and put my REAL address on it!

In case you're interested the answer is "1910", although I have no idea what the question is. Why not send them a postcard and see if you win...

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my REAL work


my REAL work, originally uploaded by andytgeezer.

I had to do a presentation today at a meeting about moving files and I decided to make it stick a little.

I hate meetings as a rule and am always looking for ways to stay awake. Usually I find that the best way to do this is to daydream about postcards or to get up and present something so I decided to combine the 2 and do a presentation including your postcards.

For my own professional development I wanted to film this to see how I actually look when I present or teach. This is usually a really good way to spot what you are doing right and where you could improve. I have to confess, that after watching it, I think that I say "erm" way too much and repeat things, but here's a small snippet showing the latest postcards I've received from Richard Canard, Okadascat and Lindsay from Swap-bot among others...

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my REAL wall - 16 March 2010 - A(l)lot of post

As the winter finally starts to recede, we in the office have decided to take up a plot at the allotment on campus.

The allotment was the brainchild of one of the lecturers, Tessa, who is an environmental champion - it even says so on her business card! She applied for funding last year to turn some of the space on the university campus into an allotment for the students and the local children, and some of the staff have taken plots too.

So far, me and Kerry at work have got out to the plot 3 times and had a good dig, while Elena and I have been growing tomato seedlings in the house, which are shown here with post from Heleen, Heather76 and Bunigirl

To find out what happens to these seedlings, check out our allotment blog, which I set up called RU Outdoors. As you'll see, I still have a lot to learn about all this plant growing stuff...

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your REAL wall - Boo Cartledge: My REAL tree

your REAL tree - Boo Cartledge 2

Boo Cartledge recently sent me a message to tell me that she had put up a REAL tree, inspired by my REAL wall in Louiseville, Kentucky. And here it is in all it's glory!

Mary Cartledge is one of my very earliest mailart contributors to this blog, and just recently she sent me a comment from Louisville, Kentucky to tell me that she and her dog Koko had posted up a REAL tree on her blog.

your REAL tree - Boo Cartledge

Apparently Koko is delighted to have the new addition in the house and Mary will be adding more postcard leaves to the tree as time goes on.


Looking very closely I spotted one of my postcards in there, so this immediately qualifies as a your REAL wall! There are some other great contributions in there as well, from Dosanko Debbie, David Berube and Dumpsterdiver among the ones I recognise too. Keep em coming Boo!


The original post with these pics is at itsonlyabook.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-real-tree.html

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Art meets mathematics

This last month has been absolutely hectic in my REAL wall HQ. Both me and Elena have taken up new courses which have meant that I'm studying web design and she's studying statistics every night, hence why postcard and wall production has fallen through the floor. In addition to this, I decided that, with all my evenings taken up, I had to find more time in the day to fill, so I've taken up Aikido from 6:30-8:00 AM(!), 2 days a week!

In this week's post I have post from some of my REAL life friends Carl, who paid a visit to Berlin and L-Plate and Sana who went to Oxford this week, returning some maths homework for me on a postcard. Mailart on the wall this week comes from Fluxus Dakota (Art Detox 2010) and Super-Aska.

Super-Aska is an Australian artist, whose work is inspired by numbers. Maths and Fractal imagery permeate her pieces. The orange piece on my wall today seems to show the internal structure of an orange, but could also be translated as the plasma fluctuations in a plasma ball. I guess the parallels between nature and maths are illustrated in this case, and often fractal imagery occurs in natural phenomena.

Super-Aska is sending out loads of postcards showing close-ups of her paintings, some of which can be seen on her site. If you want one, why not visit her site and send her an email, and apparently she has something
called a facebook group too. Whatever one of those is...

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your REAL wall - Clara Yoon's Postcard towers in Massachusetts

I found out about Clara Yoon's Postcard Skyline project a while ago after posting up a thread on the postcrossing forum about postcard displays.

Clara has been collecting postcards for a while and sticking them on her bedrrom wall, initially to make a tower, then decided to go for a whole skyline!

I recently sent her a postcard to add to her wall and got an email back today thanking me for it.

Here's what she says

"Your postcard was lovely and is now proudly nestled amongst the other postcard bricks of my postcard towers!

I'm not going for any particular skyline - just a skyline in general! But I now have over 150 postcards and it's shaping up really well!

I've attached a picture of it as it looks currently and I would be so proud to be up on myrealwall!!!

Thanks again so much for the postcard!! I really appreciate it!!!

- Clara"

Mine is the Maharaja postcard, fourth down, third column from the left in the central tower.

By the looks of things she's going to run out of space on that wall pretty soon. Why not visit her site and give her a hand today!

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03 March 2010 - Wall of arts

It's been a few weeks since I posted on the kitchen REAL wall and since then I paid a visit to Goldhawk Road, the old address to pick up 3 pieces of mail, shown here.

I have never taken it for granted how much effort the readers of this blog go to to send stuff and always appreciate everything that arrives but this morning, looking at this lot I felt a REAL sense of pride and elation.

A year down the line from setting up my REAL wall, and almost every day I get something amazing in the post and all of it is so different and inspiring. As silly as this may sound, puttinga REAL wal up in morning reminds me how cool it is that humans have such great creative ability and capacity for sharing that with others.

It's a tremendous feeling.

Today sees the return of Art Tower and Shivablack, 2 regular mailart contributors, and a set of colour swatches from Sherri Ayers, around which I should base a poem to send back to her.

The beautiful collage with the face and paddles in the bottom left is a new mailartist to the wall, who I have seen around other sites, called L Podob. I love the textures on this piece, it has what I think is a glue layer over it which feels great and the colours merge really well. One to watch for the future I think.

In the top centre is a postcard of @Jason Cullison's from an exhibition he was recently exhibiting at in LA.

At the top right is a postcard from France from Nicolas de La Casiniere. This may be in response to my call for post related to causes, as it is against the wall in Palestine.

The Israeli West Bank barrier is a huge concrete wall built in Israel to seperate Israel from the Palestinian West Bank. I was there 2 years ago, and it is a huge imposing feature, sometimes up to 8m high, with checkpoints all along it. I was interested in taking pics of graffiti there, but the Israeli guards shouted at me for taking pictures, which is a shame as it's full of great protest art.

As Nicolas says, "Some walls are peaceful and full of graphic poetry. Some are not."

Which side of the wall are you on?

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Postal love story


Postal love story, originally uploaded by andytgeezer.

This little handmade gem came in from Postmuse congratulating me and Elena on our engagement.

Mr Salt and Ms Pepper are shown here modelling Elena's engagement ring. Awwwww