As a child, had I been asked, I probably would have said that my main hobby was stamp collecting. Both my sister Leslie and I were started off on this at quite an early age by our mother, who had quite an impressive album of her own, which she had brought to this country in her bag, when she arrived here as a refugee from Germany immediately before the start of the second World War. Her album clearly was very important to her, as she had only been able to bring what she could carry herself.
The stamps in her album that left the biggest impression on me where a set she had of a beautiful young Queen, surrounded by black. Our mother told us about Queen Astrid of Belgium, who went on holiday to Austria in 1935. In a tragic accident in Kussnacht (Switzerland) the royal vehicle, driven by the king himself, crashed, and the Queen was killed instantaneously. She was only thirty years old. Although severely injured, the king survived the accident, and returned to Belgium to resume his duties as both sovereign and single father of three young children, the youngest still a baby. It was a very sad story, and the stamps issued by Belgium in her memory were very beautiful and we loved looking at them.
Almost all my friends collected stamps, when I was a child. We would swap any duplicates and often spent our pocket money on going to stamp shops to buy more for our collections. Even Hawick, the very small town where I lived, had a shop devoted to the hobby. I think I probably learned all the geography and some of the history I know from stamp collecting. I would carefully look at every stamp to learn about each country and what was portrayed on it. When I was about eleven, the present I wanted and got for Christmas was a Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue. In it was detailed every stamp that had been issued in the world: it was a treasure trove of information. That was in the late 1950s and after that, stamp production and design spiralled to such an extent that it was never again possible to produce one such volume.
Pocket money was also spent on what were called “approvals”. All of the comics that we read at the time carried advertisements, encouraging us to send away for books of stamps “on approval”. Enticements of free stamps would be offered: there was no obligation to buy any of the stamps from the books sent to us, but we were able to look at them and show them off for a while, before sending them back. It was such an excitement to receive a bulky envelope through the post, even if we knew it had to be sent back again.
I was unhappy that all British stamps at that time portrayed our Queen and nothing else. Other countries were producing beautiful images of geographical features, nature, interesting people etc – but all we got was a mug shot of the monarch!
A terrible thing happened in 1959, philatelically speaking. I was a proud Scot and very aware that it was the bicentenary of the birth of the Scottish national poet, Robert Burns. I hoped that our country would make a break with tradition and produce a stamp to celebrate, but no such luck. I felt so embarrassed that year when the Russians chose to produce a stamp bearing his portrait. It should have been us!!!! I felt shamed. I am pleased to note that since then the tradition of only having the monarch on stamps has been broken, but it was not in time to save my Scottish pride.
Although I have not collected stamps in any proper way as an adult, I have been unable to throw or give away interesting used stamps. For years I have torn all such stamps off envelopes and popped them in a drawer, in hope I suppose, of a child or grandchild taking an interest. None have. I acquired my knowledge of the world and the countries in it from philately. I suppose Jae’s boys, my grandsons, have got just as much knowledge – possibly more – from following world football. They know all the flags of the world and where all the countries are and what their capitals are as a result of their interest in the game. That was not an option for children raised in the years before television was generally available, so I guess stamp collecting filled the space.
I dug out my old stamp album recently, to see what stamps I have relevant to our Kilimanjaro climb. I have a page of stamps from Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika – Tanganyika being what Tanzania, where Kili is situated, used to be called. Not one of the stamps had Kili on it. So that is why I did not know in which continent – let alone country – Kili was in, when this climb was first mooted, as admitted in a very early blog post. If I had had this 2/- stamp issued in 1954 in my collection, I would have known for the last sixty years exactly where Kili was!
