Got something to get off your chest?
The past year has been a very new and difficult experience for virtually everybody in Britain and across the world. Therefore, it’s no wonder that people have felt new things, lived different experiences and formed new opinions after 365 days since we first went into lockdown. [Featured image: @marbyandelm]
And, quelle surprise, not all of them are nice and rosy, but hey. At the end of the day, we’re all human and it’s great to get your thoughts out somehow, right?
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People have been using this London stationary shop as an outlet for their deepest, darkest lockdown confessions, sending in postcards with their thoughts. Some are sad, some are happy; some are serious, some are hilarious; not all all are quite taboo, but who cares? After a year locked up at home, people are bound to have all kinds of thoughts they need to get out in the open somehow.
Well, this postcard scheme is just a wonderful way to do just that in a healthy way. The idea was brought about by Eleanor Tattersfield, who began giving out stamped blank postcards marked “Lockdown Secret” to Londoners in January this year. She is the founder of the Marby and Elm print workshop and stationery store in Exmouth Market.
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Speaking to AFP on the idea’s birth, she said: “I thought, ‘God, wouldn’t that be brilliant in lockdown to have an outlet for this strange year’.”
But, she did not anticipate hundreds of cards flying in with people’s lockdown confessions. Many even came in the form of miniature works of art.
A quick scroll of their Instagram account proves that popular themes have included sex and masturbation, in-laws, increasingly yeti-like body hair, stashes of sex toys, weird food habits and Zoom calls. Others have ranged from fears of opening up after lockdown, to one writer confessing they “don’t miss any of you” about their family members. Hopefully that one doesn’t get leaked at the Christmas dinner table!
Another actually confessed to their “inappropriate lockdown crush” on Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific advisor who is known to appear on the Covid briefings alongside Boris Johnson.
Others weren’t so much secrets as loving proclamations. One showed heart-warming tale of remembering how much love the writer had for their significant other, and another came from a mother, decorated with beautiful rainbows, detailing how proud she feels of her soon coming out to his family during lockdown.
And, some even confessed to some deviant crimes! One wrote in confessing to forging “thousands of pounds worth of train tickets”.
With a bizarre, fantastic, wholesome and often hilarious set of postcards, this idea undoubtedly captures the entire mood of the nation over lockdown, warts and all.