Photo by Ali Bakhtiari on Unsplash
by Chris Cottom
Stamp collecting is a highly evolved form of hunter-gatherer behaviour, with complex rituals governing barter and display. It was particularly suited to late 1960s father-son bonding, when every short-trousered mummy’s boy at 47, Petunia Avenue, Carshalton would await the postman, hopeful for a parental postcard from East Pakistan or Tanganyika, anywhere a former clerical officer in the Ministry of Supply, now an export manager in industrial fastenings, might be sent, with his briefcase of samples, for weeks at a time. The bulging starter packs of the famous Bridgnorth Stamp Club, pocket-money-priced at one shilling and sixpence, not only put philately within the reach of every schoolboy, but helped develop essential skills such as budgeting, manual dexterity, and an aversion to yobbo pastimes like kicking a ball about or watching Juke Box Jury. Mounting a mint condition, navy blue, threepenny 1938 Basutoland King George VI required a crumb-free dining-room table, controlled breathing, immunity from the fug of Three Nuns pipe tobacco, and the guts to keep going despite the Nile crocodile at the bottom clearly having consumed the noble monarch from the neck down, leaving only his head, his expression stoic, but understandably surprised. To the precise specifications of an Argus-eyed father, a teenager would relish a Saturday evening repositioning his 1969 fourpenny First Flight of Concorde as it arrowed through a turquoise stratosphere to the very edge of space, would enjoy stroking its crisp perforations, confident that cataloguing his commemorative section was infinitely superior to recreational cannabis or a surreptitious underage skinful in the beer garden at the Carpenter’s Arms. Indeed, through the stiff yellowy pages of his Stanley Gibbons Junior Album, a boy could navigate to the New World, stamp-dazzling sorting offices from Kashmir to Carshalton with mum-cards aplenty; could dream himself grown and flown, father-free and far away.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. He’s packed Christmas hampers in a Harrods basement, sold airtime for Radio Luxembourg, and served a twelve-year stretch as an insurance copywriter. He liked the writing job best. chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom; @chriscottom.bsky.social
