A Definitive Hobby

Do boys, I wonder, in these days of computers and Nintendo, still go through a phase of collecting stamps?

My old stamp albums are still knocking about up in the attic, though it's many years since I had a look at them. The last time I bought a set of stamps was in 2000 and then I only bought it to serve as illustrations on the pages of a website about our holiday in Austria that year.

Before that it must be around 30 years or more since I bought stamps specifically with a view to keeping them. I had sets of the commemorative stamps for the launching of the QE2, the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, and the set released with Concorde on them. After that I don't really remember anything sticking in my mind. Just on envelopes...

It was always seen as a good hobby for a young developing mind. All that sorting, collating, cataloging and conserving. It did have its messy side too which appeals to young boys. It was far cheaper to soak old used stamps off envelopes than buy new ones so most of the time my brother and I would sit cutting the corners off envelopes and plunging them into a cereal dish of water that by the time we finished was the consistency of gloop and only half full because the other half had gone over the floor or over ourselves.

Then there was the tricky bit about stamp hinges. We would take even our brand new mint condition stamps and apply liberal amounts of spit to a stamp hinge then plaster it onto the back of the stamps.

Anything would do as a stamp album. We had bought ones for a while but they filled up and then when you had Australia on one page and Brazil on the next someone would unthinkingly buy you a set of stamps from Austria and you realised you had no page to put them in alphabetical order.

In the end my stamps all ended up on loose sheets in ring binders. They are still there. Next time I go up in the attic I must have a look and see what I've got. In fact somewhere, I'm absolutely sure, I have a large brown paper bag stuffed full of the corners of envelopes! Where's that cereal bowl?