IN THE NON-STOP global jumble sale, there are items floating about out there that one sometimes feels should really be brought home.

Postcards are among them. The benefit of growing up in a seaside resort (Skerries, Co Dublin) means that many old postcards of my home town are available, and several are of the holiday camp which was once the heartbeat of its summer. But the postcards can also be reminders of how little has changed - more cars on the streets, more bookmakers, but otherwise very recognisable.

But when buying old postcards, it is always worth looking for those with a message, because they bring with them personality, poignancy and occasional mystery. A couple of years ago I bought a postcard on eBay from an English dealer. It had been sent from Skerries in 1915, from a woman who had been on holiday in Britain and who had, she mentioned, avoided the submarines while travelling home on the ferry. She was writing to a woman she had met while away. Within hours of it arriving through my postbox, I had established that the sender's granddaughter lived across the road from the house in which I grew up. By the next day, the postcard was back with the family from whom it had been sent 90 years earlier.

And then there is the postcard pictured here. Sent from Skerries to Tipperary in 1904, its picture a faded floral design, it contained a curious message. A woman complains of receiving letters, "'You must come back' sort of letters you know. But I am not going back." Whatever does that mean? I don't know, and I'm unlikely to ever find out. But the €6.60 I paid for this mini-mystery was well worth it.

Shane Hegarty