About six months ago this postcard sailed through our letterbox.

I didn’t have any friends on holiday, any that were interested in basking sharks or would send me a postcard “just because”. I even smudged the writing on “Marley” to see if it was printed spam, but it’s actually someone’s real handwriting. A real person wrote and sent this.

I was quite confused, but things got even stranger when I read what was on the back. You can click the image for a larger version.
From what I can tell, it was sent from Scotland – I think the postmark says Glasgow – and it’s addressed to a Master Helme. Obviously that isn’t me, and neither is it my girlfriend or our housemate at the time. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, none of the previous tenants went by the name Master Helme either. I presume whoever wrote this postcard knew him from a long time ago.

The handwriting is obviously a child’s, but here, as accurately as I can make it, is what it says:

To Marley

I no you don’t layk theis but we haf bigin been to balamory and we hard to go on to a balamory trip and to Marley from Alfie and Franco

The first section

“I know you don’t like this” is absolutely fascinating. Why didn’t Marley like it that they were in Balamory? Why did they have to go on that trip?

The more I read it, the more questions come to my mind. The address is written much more clearly – is it a parent or much older sibling? Why is it only addressed to Master, not Mr Helme?

However, nothing prepared me for the last bit.

It comes after the names, so I suppose it was added as an afterthought:

I fell off my bike and killed my self

I have read and re-read that line so many times, but I’m still not sure what it says. It looks like it says “killed”, and I can’t think of anything else it could say, but of course that doesn’t make any sense at all.

It’s such a bizarre postcard to get by accident that I can’t help but wonder what Marley would have made of it. What do you think of it?