One of the few upright postcards in the collection, unusually, Au Col de Jaman is a black and white photograph and shows the silhouetted figure of a skier or snow walker at a time when an annual winter sports holiday destination like this would have been out of the question for the working classes of Sunderland.

Perhaps it shows instead the usual form of winter travel for the local people living in the area. We have no other clue, the back is unwritten. This one may have been sent in an envelope or collected as a souvenir. There’s a pleasing little crumple of wear in the bottom left hand corner. It’s been on a shelf or used as a bookmark.

‘Editions  Start [maybe] ~ Lausanne’. So the postcard is made in Switzerland, French speaking Lausanne on the shore of Lake Geneva.

This Wiki Commons map of Switzerland has Col de Jaman at the tip of the dolphin-shaped lake on the bottom left of the map. The big sugar-loaf shaped mountain in the picture postcard is the Dent de Jaman, ‘dent’ being French for tooth.

It’s a long way for a lad from Millfield.