WHEN I was a younger man I was flummoxed by many things: how to unhook a bra and how to read sheet music among them.

Fortunately the months of July and August swelled with the promise of adventure to distract my mind from such sources of frustration, often in territories gladdeningly dissimilar to the one I grew up in - Thatcher's Britain, in short.

Once upon a time, for example, correspondence with a penpal in Belgium developed into a summer working for his father in Waterloo. After discovering the joys of such jobs as driving a fork-lift truck with no supervision around a builder's yard (Pierre Jadot was not one for red tape), the family and I jumped into a two-vehicle convoy and ventured across Europe to meet up with an old chum of the patriarch who lived in Greece. Yugoslavia was being ripped apart but to my young mind this was merely an engrossing development in the evolution of Europe. What a road trip.

The common factor in the summers of my youth, whether spent in North Yorkshire, the Lakes, Arran or the semi-urban sprawl of central Belgium, is there was no internet or mobile phones. And because there was no internet or mobile phones, there was only one way of letting your loved ones know you hadn't been mugged, kidnapped or otherwise harmed: you sent a postcard.

It's early days but I guarantee by the end of this summer I'll be able to count the number of postcards I've received on the fingers of one hand. If they're anything like the first to come through my letterbox, though, I'm not sure I want them at all.

The glossy side features nine general views of Hamburg; the other an 80-cent stamp featuring a primula and the greeting: "Grube aus der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg [greetings from the free and Hanseatic city of Hamburg]." My name and address are written without error. So far, so normal.

"Hi there," my correspondent begins (I've decapitalised the original script for the sake of your eyesight). "Three weeks in and nine to go ... Going well (mostly). Not spending loads of time in Germany - know it quite well - so heading for Scandinavia tomorrow. Hamburg cool though. Really using the docks well - what a place to live. Cheers the noo! x"

And with that jovial parting shot the missive from Hamburg concludes. Thing is, I've wracked my brains over and over (and over again, just for the craic), and I don't know anyone who's spending two weeks on continental Europe let alone 12 in Germany and/or Scandinavia. As for the signature - Cowane? Cavane? - it bears no resemblance to that of anyone I know.

Spam emails I can understand, but this is a whole new level of perplexity. It makes whipping off a bra look like child's play. And that's saying something.