A crumpled carrier bag of old postcards has rewritten my past

The carrier bag had been sitting in a cupboard for 30 years. It was blue and glossy, with a heraldic crest on the front: a crown, a shield, and gothic lettering. It had always looked faintly absurd. That was entirely the point. 

I had read about Duffer of St George. As an adolescent growing up in a nice but dull West London suburb, I studied The Face magazine with an obsessive reverence. Its pages were a portal into a world I had dreamt of one day accessing. Nightclubs, music, clothes. In the early Nineties, Duffer of St George was at the centre of all of it. 

I was secretive about all this. My mates weren’t particularly interested in West End fantasies. Perhaps they were more comfortable in their own skins than I was. 

I would hop on a tube to Piccadilly Circus just to wander the streets, peering through the windows of shops and bars I had read about. 

Duffer (as it was known) was on D’Arblay Street, Soho. Even the address felt exotic. When I arrived, I was too nervous to actually go inside. It was a small shop, and there was nowhere to hide. The shop assistants were like really well-dressed football hooligans with razor-sharp cheekbones. Men with French crops hung about on vintage scooters on the street outside. I loitered, snatching glimpses through the window of all the clothes I had only ever seen in glossy print. 

At one point, somehow, I got hold of one of their carrier bags. I used it to carry my exercise books to school. It was a badge. I knew exactly what I wanted it to mean – I’m not sure if any of my peers knew or cared. 

By the time I unearthed this bag, it was creased and worn. It bulged not with clothes but with a huge archive of cards dating back to 1985. The earliest were from my father. We didn’t live together, but he would send me a postcard from his office once a week. They carried the sort of quirky imagery that you didn’t get in WHSmith back then.

The first featured a picture of Charlie Chaplin falling over. On the back, he had written ‘They could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard you were back at school!’ His captions were always pithily funny. He was an ad man by trade. He didn’t sign it dad (which I rarely called him) or Baz (the nickname most people used for him). He signed them all: Love Barry x. I saw him most weekends for trips to the zoo or a museum. This was his way of showing me he thought about me in the week too.  

I took a photo of the cards and sent them to him. I told him how much I used to enjoy receiving them. He remembered them too and said he loved finding them and thinking of what to write on the back. He is 86 now.  

Read more:

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• Sam Delaney: ‘I thought I was too good for my local jazz club. Not any more’
• Postcards From Scotland by Grant McPhee review – a bittersweet tribute to Scottish indie bands

There was other stuff in the archive: handmade birthday cards from my mates in the days before Photoshop, let alone Canva. Teenage boys who had painstakingly fashioned personalised cards using scissors and glue. The sentiment was always juvenile, often obscene and usually hilarious. 

There were leaving cards from my first places of work. The types that are signed by a dozen or more people, each with their own little messages of encouragement. I briefly worked for the Labour Party when I was 19. The leaving card features offers of work from two future leaders of the party. I never contacted them again. When I graduated from university all I wanted to do was get a job on a lad mag so I could access free beer. 

There were postcards from friends on their summer holidays. Long, silly messages, filled with bizarre detail. In person, all we ever did was abuse each other. In retrospect, those cards were expressions of a deep affection. I wondered if I sent similar stuff to them. I think I did. 

When I think about my life, I often have a vague sense of being an outsider looking in. A young man on the fringes. A boy with his nose pressed against the window of Duffer of St George, knowing what he wanted but too fretful to actually take it. 

The contents of the bag tell a different story. They documented a life closer to the one I always wanted. One where I was happy, accepted, liked. I always knew that I was loved. Being liked sometimes felt even more important. 

​Why do we tell ourselves sadder versions of our own lives? I remember enjoying life when I was a young man. And then, as I reached middle age, I crafted a new narrative. One that placed more emphasis on the occasional disappointments than regular good fortune. 

​Perhaps it is a form of protection. Perhaps acknowledging that I had everything feels like too much pressure. 

Anyway, I went on Vinted the next day and bought an old zip-up hoodie. It was bright green with red lettering across the chest spelling out the word Duffer. 

​I saw it as a gift from 50-year-old me to 19-year-old me. He had a happy life. But I know something he didn’t. 

Sam Delaney’s book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £12.99) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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