...And so, one fine day, Jumilla, the goose of Groombridge, set out on an adventure....
In the Strand, on my way to lunch with Barrett Bonden, I pass Stanley Gibbons. I think to myself, it must be nearly 70 years since I first heard of Stanley Gibbons and its famous catalogue of postage stamps. Schoolboys such as I huddled over the big orange annual to identify the stamps in their collections. And above all to price them. Their value, according to Stanley Gibbons, used and unused, assumed vast importance in our eyes, not that we were speculating, but somehow the prices quoted and charged by the shop, which seemed in those days to have infinite resources, gave added substance to the little squares of coloured paper, which we stuck into albums, with the help of lightly gummed "hinges", designed not to damage the stamps, while at the same time allowing you to show them off to your friends. "That one's worth 10 shillings", one would say. While another would boast of a "complete sets" of a single issue. How strange that craze seems to day, but then how similar to later and current enthusiasms for Proust and blogging and curry and Champagne! As I pass the shop, I peer in wondering whether I might spot a line of heavy orange books on a shelf, but no such luck. And it crosses my mind that when I started collecting postage stamps, they had been going for barely 100 years. Not surprising that you could list all or most of the existing stamps in a single catalogue. Nowadays, there wouldt be far too many for a single book.
Frequently I lose an everyday possession like a pen or note pad and having looked everywhere for it, give it up for lost, with a sad shrug of impatience. Then the lost object turns up and the reunion is not far short of joyous. The Parker ballpoint, which I lost a few weeks ago must, I thought, by now be in someone else's possession, having been discovered in the street or on a bus seat. I wished the new owner luck in whatever enterprise it would be employed in whether writing shopping lists or sonnets, love letters or protests to the newspaper. Then putting my hand in the pocket of a jacket which I had not worn for some time, I detect the shape but not the substance of a pen. It has slipped through a minute hole in the line of the pocket. After some athletic fiddling in the lining, I manage to extract the pen. For a moment it is like that scene which recurs in movies when boy having met girl, loses girl and meets girl again. Ascendant harmonies led by violins and trumpets.
In the Strand, on my way to lunch with Barrett Bonden, I pass Stanley Gibbons. I think to myself, it must be nearly 70 years since I first heard of Stanley Gibbons and its famous catalogue of postage stamps. Schoolboys such as I huddled over the big orange annual to identify the stamps in their collections. And above all to price them. Their value, according to Stanley Gibbons, used and unused, assumed vast importance in our eyes, not that we were speculating, but somehow the prices quoted and charged by the shop, which seemed in those days to have infinite resources, gave added substance to the little squares of coloured paper, which we stuck into albums, with the help of lightly gummed "hinges", designed not to damage the stamps, while at the same time allowing you to show them off to your friends. "That one's worth 10 shillings", one would say. While another would boast of a "complete sets" of a single issue. How strange that craze seems to day, but then how similar to later and current enthusiasms for Proust and blogging and curry and Champagne! As I pass the shop, I peer in wondering whether I might spot a line of heavy orange books on a shelf, but no such luck. And it crosses my mind that when I started collecting postage stamps, they had been going for barely 100 years. Not surprising that you could list all or most of the existing stamps in a single catalogue. Nowadays, there wouldt be far too many for a single book.
Frequently I lose an everyday possession like a pen or note pad and having looked everywhere for it, give it up for lost, with a sad shrug of impatience. Then the lost object turns up and the reunion is not far short of joyous. The Parker ballpoint, which I lost a few weeks ago must, I thought, by now be in someone else's possession, having been discovered in the street or on a bus seat. I wished the new owner luck in whatever enterprise it would be employed in whether writing shopping lists or sonnets, love letters or protests to the newspaper. Then putting my hand in the pocket of a jacket which I had not worn for some time, I detect the shape but not the substance of a pen. It has slipped through a minute hole in the line of the pocket. After some athletic fiddling in the lining, I manage to extract the pen. For a moment it is like that scene which recurs in movies when boy having met girl, loses girl and meets girl again. Ascendant harmonies led by violins and trumpets.
3 comments:
Wonderful action photo of Jumilla, of Groombridge, putting her best foot forward, off to see the world!
There are two pens I feel toward the same way you do your Parker; one, a fountain pen I keep for special letters; the other, a Cross ball point, sleek and silvery, which has had more refills than I can remember. I like the way they feel in my hand and the lines they lay upon the paper.
Jumilla looks so disapproving in the first photo.
Perhaps she's off to complain.......
or she's discovered that no one's listening
anyway. Something amusing about a goose gait, especially walking away......
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