Friday, 28 November 2025

A Postcard A Day - Friday 28 November 2025 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps,

We've made it through another week and there have been lots of smiles and positive moments.

A postcard always makes me smile, and particularly this one:


It comes from Russia and was sent to me by Boris. I had never heard of this book. I looked on the Internet and found this:
These three charming books were printed by Puffin Books in the 1940’s. They don’t seem to have been reprinted, not just by Puffin but by anyone, which bearing in mind that they are for very young readers, or more likely parents reading to young children, and their inherently fragile nature consisting of just eight sheets of paper, including the covers, folded and stapled in their centre makes finding them in good condition extremely difficult.

The Holiday Train Goes To The Moon is the last book in the series, not just of the Holiday Train but of Baby Puffins themselves as an imprint was published in April 1948 as the ninth Baby Puffin.

The book tells the story of The Holiday Train being surprised by Carrumpus, a magical character who introduces himself saying “I come to visit trains when they get tired or overworked and cheer them up.” He does this by granting them a wish.

As you can see above The Holiday Train wishes he could fly and soon he has wonderful golden wings so he could fly around rather than running on rails.
Soon he decides to travel to the moon where he finds a railway, but not one like at home as here the carriages pull the locomotive rather than the other way round. But nevertheless The Holiday Train sets off to explore.

A fun story. The stamps are great too:

The stamp on the right features S. V. Kovalevskaya. Wikipedia writes: Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya  born Korvin-Krukovskaya; 15 January [O.S. 3 January] 1850 – 10 February 1891) was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysispartial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer of equality for women in mathematics. Kovalevskaya was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, in the modern sense of that term, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in mathematics (and one of the first appointed to a full professorship in any discipline), as well as one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaya was "the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century"

Clever lady!
The left hand stamp celebrates 450 years of Ufa.
The postage stamp provides an image of the monument to M. Shaimuratov, the building of the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theatre against the background of the city panorama.

The query "450 years UFA" refers to the 450th anniversary of the city of Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, which was celebrated in 2024


The city was founded in 1574, and this milestone was marked by official celebrations, congratulations from figures like Vladimir Putin, and commemorative events, according to Russian sources and news outlets. 

Apparently there is a beautiful mosque in Ufa:
This photo is from 2015 and it looks like they are getting the mosque cleaned up before the big celebration.

What has been happening here in Spain? Well, Monday saw me driving to Murcia airport again as my daughter was leaving. On Tuesday my friends Kim and Andy came to lunch.
My cat Ronnie loves to sit on Andy's lap. When they arrive I call Ronnie and say: Your favourite lap has arrived.

On Wednesday I go to the gym. 
We do all sorts of exercises with weights on our ankles and sometimes we use dumbells or elastics. The chairs are there for balance as most of us are older ladies.

Here is my teacher Ana:
And here am I posing with Ana:

Yesterday evening I went to yoga (no photos) and on the way home I photographed the Ginko Biloba tree in our village . There are several, but this one is pretty as its leaves are changing colour:

The ginko biloba leaves are very recognisable:
The look like wings.

Also yesterday my dinner consisted of lamb's liver. I like liver and I like to eat it at least once a year. 
I cooked lots of onions and then some French green beans. Then I flash fried the liver slices. Very nice it was too. Of course I didn't eat all that. That were two portions.

That was my week. Lots of smiles.

I will leave you some funnies at the end like I always do, but for now, I will say: Have a lovely weekend and keep smiling!

Lisca



















































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