This one came from Darla, my Postal Pal in America. She sent it last August. A card of Ramsgate, a harbour town in Kent, posted from the United States to a man who lives a couple of hours’ drive from it.
I love that. She went looking for a lighthouse for me, found one in England, and sent it across the Atlantic to reach me in England.
It is the West Pier light. A short granite tower with a glass lantern, built in 1842 by the engineer John Shaw. It replaced an earlier light that stood too close to the end of the pier, where the masts of passing ships kept knocking into it.
Ramsgate is the only Royal Harbour in Britain. George IV gave it the title in 1821, pleased with how he had been looked after when he sailed from there to Hanover.
Around the top of the tower, carved three times, are two Latin words. Perfugium Miseris. A refuge for the unfortunate.
On the card you cannot see any of that. The photographer caught it at sunrise, and the sun has settled right inside the lantern. For one moment the old lamp is lit by the real thing.
I know that pier. Last year the Association of Lighthouse Keepers held its AGM in Ramsgate, and I walked out along it with my ALK pals. People who will happily stand in the wind for an hour talking about a lens. My kind of people.
I am going back soon. It felt like the right time to take this card off the pile.
Then you turn it over.
The back is pure Darla.
A 1980 American windmill stamp, Texas 1890, from a set of five. Beside it, two Forever stamps marking 250 years of the US Postal Service. A busy street, a post box, a mail van on its rounds. In the corner, a little stack of books with the titles filled in by hand. Navajo Code Talkers. Lord of the Rings. Western Lizards.
And along the top, a row of tiny weather symbols. Cloud, rain, storm. She has circled the sun.
A card about the sun, with the sun picked out on the back. I nearly missed it.
Perfugium Miseris. The harbour promised shelter to anyone caught out at sea.
I think friends do the same job, only more quietly. Darla across the Atlantic with her stamps. The ALK lot on a windy pier.
Some refuges are made of granite. Mine mostly come in the post.
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