Postcard: 'The Little Village of Palindrome'

There seems to be no end to the fun one can have with towns named after different forms of wordplay. I generally do one of these every year. For the still confused, a 'palindrome' is a phrase or word that reads the same forwards or backwards. Thus 'Rotavator' is a palindromic word and 'Rats live on no evil star' is a palindromic sentence. My favourite of these is: 'A man, a plan, a canal - Panama' which manages to juggle a technical virtuosity with actually making sense in a lyrical way - something that not many palindromes manage.

Of course, one can use the word rather than the letter as the palindroming unit and come up with 'word-unit palindrome sentences' which go like this: 'Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, finds boy eyeing bikini on a bathing-girl.' (J.A. Lindon)

Better still, you can use the line itself as the unit:

As I was passing near the jail
I met a man, but hurried by.
His face was ghastly, grimly pale.
He had a gun. I wondered why
he had. A gun? I wondered... why,
his face was ghastly! Grimly pale,
I met a man but hurried by,
as I was passing by the jail.

J.A.Lindon

The location for the picture was Paincastle, in Radnorshire.

Colour postcard, unnumbered, given out on UK/US tour for The Fourth Bear July/August 2006. 1000 editions.