Postcard from Todd Mansbridge to Fred, October 1988. Front: Batman and Robin in the Batcave.
HOLY COFFINS BATMAN — WE’RE DEAD.
OI FRED, I’M DRYING LAUNDRY AND STARTING INTO AN ALL DAY LONG “I WISH I COULD CUT MY HEAD OFF” HANGOVER. KEN AND I WERE OUT ALL NIGHT DRINKING WITH A FRIEND OF HIS FROM BUCKINGHAM AND HIS FRIENDS. WE TRASHED A SECTION OF A RESTAURANT, GOT KICKED OUT OF A CLUB AND I ENDED UP GETTING SICK.
Todd was in London that fall, working at ANZ Bank — Australia New Zealand — for £5/hour. Enough to live pretty well on, he said. Ken Little was there too, which I think explains some of the trouble they got into.
The Batman postcard was perfectly on-brand. In the months before this one, I’d gotten postcards from Vienna, Amsterdam, and a van Gogh museum card with writing packed into every square millimeter. Todd writes everything in block capitals, which somehow makes it funnier.
He mentioned that Dave Greensfelder and Leslie from Scripps were coming over for Thanksgiving, and that he’d seen Stiff Little Fingers and Robyn Hitchcock (“again”) in concert. He also went to a Dürer exhibit at the British Museum. Same guy, somehow.
He routed a separate postcard to Min Soo through my P.O. Box because he’d lost Min Soo’s uncle’s address. “It was your turn to watch the Korean,” he wrote.