A Postcard A Day - Friday 20 February 2026 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps, Today is Friday, when I look back on the past week and remember the smiles and the good things.

Top of my list (for this blog at least) is the arrival of a postcard in my letterbox. Today I will show you a postcard from Japan:

It is sent to me by Kanae from Tokyo. I googled whether this name was female or male and it's mostly female, (but a famous Vtuber (male) is also called Kanae). Anyway, he/she explains that the drawing is a ukijo-e by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka. It depicts a well known geisha of the time and the famous landscape of Tokyo. 

The artist is called 'the last of the ukijoe artists'.

Wikipedia writes:

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi ( 30 April 1839 – 9 June 1892) was a Japanese printmaker.

Yoshitoshi has widely been recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. 

Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing. In a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

His life was summed up by John Stevenson:

Yoshitoshi's courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory.

— John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon,

The stamp is not spectacular, but pretty:

Sorry I didn't quite get it in focus.

What has been happening here in our village in southern Spain? Well, we had Intercambio (our English/Spanish conversation group) on Saturday. 

We always have fun, and afterwards we often go for a drink. This time we went to a different bar as most were fully booked because it was St Valentines Day. It hasn't filtered through here to a great extent (no cards etc) but couples do tend to go out that night.

I managed to also finish my jigsaw puzzle in the week:

From Monday onwards the weather was a lot better. No more gales and rain and cold.

I feel a lot better now that the sun has come out. I get quite depressed when there are long periods of greyness.

I still go to Pilates twice a week. Here is our studio, photographed before all the ladies arrive. Usually we are 5 ladies and one man.

Ronnie is doing great. The bad weather doesn't affect him. He still wants to go out onto the patio and have a sniff around, but when it rains, he sits under one of the chairs. 

Below is Ronnie sitting on the back of the settee. In the background you can see a bag of pellets ready to be put into the stove. Next to it is a special vacuum cleaner for ashes, which I use before I turn on the pellet burner.

Of course I will put some funnies at the end for you to have a smile about.

Have a lovely weekend,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - 17 February 2026 - T for St Barbara, a walk and a snake

 Hello lovely peeps, here I am again with a postcard. This time from Austria. It comes from my friend Maggie, who travels a lot and she sent me not one but two postcards of this amazing church (in an envelope).

It's the St Barbara church in Bärbach, Austria. It was designed by Hunderwasser.

There was nothing on Wikipedia, but from all the different sites I visited, I cobbled this information together:

Despite its post-war origin, St Barbara Kirche was in need of renovating in the late 1980s. Local citizens voted to commission the maverick Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser to undertake the redesign. 

Below the other postcard of the church by night:

Work began in 1987 and was completed in 1988.The façade, the roof and the tower with the golden sphere are rich in colour and form. The twelve gates symbolise the twelve world religions,

(Below two images from the Internet)

 and with their symbols Hundertwasser made a gesture of ecumenism, dialogue between all denominations and tolerance. The interior of the church invites to silence and prayer and shows works by local artists., with Hundertwasser's own works in the altar niche and at the baptismal font being particularly impressive.

This church is not a museum-like place, but a lived expression of diversity, spirituality, and artistic freedom. An inspiring destination in the Graz Region that uniquely combines art, religion, and imagination.

Here are more images if you like to see them

I like this unusual art by Hundertwasser, like I like Gaudi.

The stamp on the envelope was this:

It celebrates the cello.

This past week has still been awful weather, but one of my boys Richard came to see me. He lives in the UK but was in Barcelona for business. He caught a flight to Granada and we enjoyed a couple of days together. That lifted my spirits no end. He took me out to lunch:

And we went for a long walk in between showers:

We met a snake along the path who had the same idea:

I don't know what sort it was, and it didn't stop, just crossed the road.

The weather was really stormy and at times it was difficult to stay on my feet.

We also went out for dinner and it is here that I can show you my drink that is a requirement to join the T-Party hosted by Bluebeard and Elizabeth.

My bottle of alcohol free beer. (I'm still on antibiotics for my peridental problem).

Then a friend and I drove him to Malaga airport to fly home. 

The below picture was taken out of the car:

It's the Sierra Nevada mountains. Still very snowy.

I'll end with a photo of Ronnie, my cat, sleeping beside me as I type.

That is all for today,

Happy T-Day all,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 13 February 2026 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies,

It's Friday Smiles, so what made. me smile this week? Lots of things and first a funny postcard:

The two naughty aunties having a (naughty?) chocolate snack under the table. The illustrator is Inge Löök from Finland. She is very famous and I love her humour.

The stamp:

The cancellation stamp is  more interesting that the actual postage stamp. It was posted on the first of October, World Postcard Day. The stamp is from the 'paper' series. 

As you can see it comes from Germany, from a place called Gütersloh. Sent by a lady called Kirsten. 

On the personal front, I'm feeling a bit better, my mood has certainly lifted. Mainly because one of my boys came to visit me. He was in Barcelona for business and he got a flight to Granada to visit me, which made me very happy.

The weather was very blustery with near hurricane strength winds, but we still went for a walk. In the photo you can see a spectacular rainbow in the background.

In the above photo I am trying to walk against the wind.

We walked to the Iron Bridge (designed by Eiffel):

And walked over it. I was holding on to the railing for fear of being blown onto the sleepers with all those gaps. (It's quite high).

My son took a photo of the bridge and then made it black and white. I like it:

We went for a drink after this walk and what you see below is the tapa we got with our drink.

That is all from me today. I'm looking forward to the weekend. I hope you are too.

Of course there will be some funnies at the end.

Enjoy your weekend,

Lisca