Spectator competition winners: a postcard from Airstrip One

In Competition No. 3258, you were invited to submit a postcard sent while on holiday in a well-known fictional destination of your choice.

The enforced concision of postcard–writing sometimes produces little master-pieces. Alongside the clichés and forced jollity, you find lyricism and poignant detail. It’s a shame that people rarely send them these days. So hooray for your dispatchesfrom locations that ranged from H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness to KirrinIsland. An honourable mention goes to Susan Firth for her reflections on Ambridge (‘I’m surprised to find how many people have been involved in crimes!’); to Peter Mullen, writing from Nirvana (‘There is not even a boozer where you could crash out of consciousness and take yourself out of yourself, for there is no self to be taken out of’); and to Tracy Davidson’s account of a white-knuckle ride in Jurassic Park (‘Am perfectly safe here at the visitors’ centre while we wait for our flight to arrive… Anyway, must go now. Someone’s at the door…’)

The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each.

So your Mother fancied holidaying at a castle and here we are: Gormenghast! She’s making the best of it, unpretentiously awed by the brooding mélange of architectural styles and ivied quadrangles while I bemoan the absence of informational signage and handrails; small wonder there’s a spate of Gothically tragic fatalities hereabouts. The resident aristocrats, though picturesque, are hopeless: Earl Sepulchrave imagines himself an owl, his wife Gertrude talks only to feline and avian familiars, their daughter Lady Fuschia indulges adolescent tantrums in a distant attic. I tell them they’ll never succeed in Hospitality this way. They don’t listen; even your Mother’s attempts at genteel small talk going for nothing, family and flunkies alike too busy about esoteric rituals even to acknowledge us. Only Steerpike, an admirable youth repeatedly encountered skulking about the corridors, exhibits sufficient drive to modernise.