LO: the postcard from mary?

[pjmaster]

ive just read lyras oxford but i got a bit puzzled with the post card because she is posting it to the angels and she mentions not being 'sister'
anymore but i want to know what this could mean.
also is the postcard from our world but is now in lyras meaning that there could still be away for them to talk to each other (will and lyra).
one last thing what do you guys think the other stuff like the cruise timetable means?

[zemarl]

the postcard is something from before the story, i believe, from mary to an old friend whom she hadn't contacted in a while. where did you get the idea she's posting it to the angels?

they can't deliver post between universes, sorry.

the cruise timetable may be completely random, and it may not be. if it's important (and i can't imagine why it wouldn't be, having been included) it may come up in the book of dust, or else maybe someone else has a better idea about it than i do (not being british, i don't instantly see significance in names of places, other than the main ones).

[Enitharmon]

There are lots of strange things about the postcard, as you would discover if you read through other threads.

One is the stamp (or rather, the space where the stamp was (and where is it, anyway?) It's the wrong size and shape for any British stamp. Another is the postmark, which is not a British postmark (and it comes from somewhere called ...W BRITAIN). Also, Mary has addressed it to Lancaster, England rather than Lancaster, LA1 nxx or Lancaster, Lancs.

I wasn't aware that angels were called Angela and lived in Lancaster, but you never know. Obviouslly it makes more sense for angels to come from Lancaster than, say, York though. I assume it's the word 'sister' that suggested angels as Serafina said she'd be a sister to Mary, but 'sister' here referes to Mary no longer being a nun. Although, of course, she *was* still a nun when she started her research work in Oxford.

As for the cruise schedule, you might like to plot the journey on a calendar (note: 17 April was on a Thursday in 2003, if that helps) and an atlas. Of course, you may have some trouble with the names. Gibraltar, for example, has its Arabic name of Gebraltarik, which says something about the L-World. Palermo (Sicily) is the same as our world (but cross-refer to the list of Globetrotter maps and you will find that Sardinia, Naples and Sicily appear to be independent states in the L-World and there is a also a Venetian Republic (is that where Cittagazze is, perhaps?) Famagusta is in Cyprus. Latakia is in Syria. Alexandria is in Egypt. Jaffa is a soft biscuit covered with orange jelly and chocolate and is very yummy. And so on.

LO makes you work at it!

[pjmaster]

that angels bit sorry i got the name wrong i couldnt read the handwriting very well and didnt notice the 'e' at the end

[Ian]

You mean the 'a'? I found that the the supplements with the stage play programmes were also very interesting. There is a detailed account from Jopari as to what he had been doing for the 10 years before HDM.

[perce'co]

umm i thought about the sister thing for awhile then i relized.. she was talking about not being a nun ((sister)) anymore. The postcard was written before she went to other worlds.

[EngineerScholar]

There are lots of strange things about the postcard, as you would discover if you read through other threads.

One is the stamp (or rather, the space where the stamp was (and where is it, anyway?) It's the wrong size and shape for any British stamp. Another is the postmark, which is not a British postmark (and it comes from somewhere called ...W BRITAIN). Also, Mary has addressed it to Lancaster, England rather than Lancaster, LA1 nxx or Lancaster, Lancs.

I hope I am excused from posting to an old thread, but I felt I had to share an observation about the postcard. The postmark looks like a postmark that could have come from my homeland, the United States, and almost looks like it could refer to New Britain, Connecticut. Even the blank space for the stamp looks like it could have been one of ours. A 'Google' search also revealed at least one other New Britain, a township in Pennsylvania. This makes absolutely no sense to me, since Mary must have mailed the postcard from Oxford, England! (I have trouble thinking that she would have purchased the postcard in Oxford, flew over to the United States, and then decided to mail the card from New Britain, Connecticut! This convoluted sequence of events would explain the postmark, however!) But I was struck with how much the postmark looked like it could have come from a place not to far from me. (The postmark even looked like it could have used an older abbreviation for Connecticut underneath where it says '...W BRITAIN', which is now 'CT' but used to be 'Conn.') I think this is a meaningless coincidence, but at the same time I don't know what or where '...W BRITAIN' could be.

(FWIW, we have an Oxford here in Massachusetts, USA as well, but it bears no resemblance to the Oxford in England, as far as I can tell..)

EngineerScholar

[Ko]

I was wondering about the post card as well, and I think that it makes sense that it comes from the time when Mary hadn't visited different worlds yet. And I also didn't have the idea that she means not being a nun any more when she says she isn't an 'sister' any more. It seems to make sense, but why would she write 'sister' in quotation marks if it was just used as a synonym for nun?

Another interesting thing I realized is that the four pictures of the background of the post card show more or less important places from the trilogy. The upper left picture probably shows the bench where Lyra and Will agreed to meet once a year shortly before the last window was closed.
The picture in the lower left corner shows the hornbeam trees where Will finds the very first window.
The picture in the upper right corner shows, as indicated in the message on the other side of the card, the place where Mary Malone worked.
I did not find out yet, what the last picture shows.

Do you agree with what I said here? And have you an idea what the last picture might show?

[maija]

I didn't read the other replies so well, but i'm just wondering did the postcard get to Lyra's world before or after the windows were closed? Guess before but maybe there's one unclosed window..?

[Alewyn]

I think the last picture is St. Sophia's, or whatever its name is, I don't have TAS with me right now.

In TAS, I think, they said something about Lyra's school buying a new building near where Mary's house was. Kyra or someone pointed this out a while ago.

[kyrabelacqua]

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's St. Sophia's School. You can read more about it here: http://www.bridgetothestars.net/forum/v ... p?t=201925

Hope that helps!
Kyra

[KittyKat]

I only just noticed the postcard was from Mary when I reread the book. Are any of the other things linked in with the first three books?

[quentin]

Sorry about resurrecting an old topic, but;

It seems perfectly reasonable that a postcard with a nonstandard UK address should have a nonstandard postmark! If I didn't know better I'd say the author was American as they have a tendency to say the likes of "London, England". Also, Pullman says in the intro the postcard is from Mary.

As for whether there is anything else related to the first three books, a lot of the tourist guide to Jericho makes references to stuff in the first part of Northern Lights. Also, there is no St. Leonard's road in Lancaster.

MftGotE.

[Peter]

Jaffa is a soft biscuit covered with orange jelly and chocolate and is very yummy.

But the blackcurrant ones are even better!