Season to be jolly

With Christmas nearly upon us, I notice a decrease in correspondence coming my way. I don't particularly mind as I will probably not reply this year to any letters arriving after the end of this week. I slow down, and do a few other things, spend time with the family and all that. It is not because I do not want to post letters at this time of year, it is just I do not want to rush letters out for them to sit in a mailbag for days when the postal service grinds almost to a halt over the festive period (especially if it is a White Christmas).I have a few more festive cards to send out internationally this week, but I also must not forget to send to my UK friends too. 

I don't send gifts to my penpals, except perhaps for a few simple flat things like stickers, interesting newspaper articles, postcards and photos. I wouldn't know what to gift, and with postage rates getting high plus there has been a change in regulations for what can be sent in the post. 

I was writing a reply to a beautifully handwritten (calligraphed) letter while sat in a cafe when I noticed I was being watched by a group of lads. One said that my handwriting was nice and I replied that it is if I use a fountain pen (I was using one), then went on to comment on a couple of schoolhood (is that actually a word?) events:

• One history teacher marked me 1/10 for homework because he couldn't read my writing, however, I was unable to decipher his hand-scrawled comments
• My biology teacher suggested I cease using a ballpoint pen  and use a fountain (cartridge) pen to improve my handwriting

I showed them the letter I was replying to and said that my handwriting wasn't as neat as my correspondent's. With fountain pens, you take more care with writing and this should make it more legible. I wonder if any of the lads will have a fountain pen in the near future!

 I haven't written any Postcrossing postcards for a while. Maybe I'll send some out this week, although for some destinations, it would probably by too late to arrive before Christmas. I haven't got any festive postcards - I haven't seen them in the shops here although a certain online shop does (but the only postcards I've ordered from them have been Pixar ones).



November stats:
Letters - out 13, in 8
Postcards - in 23
Other - in 6

November

It is November; time flies....

October was a quiet postal month.

Out
Postcards: 15
Letters: 10

In
Postcards: 10
Letters: 11

And now it is only a few weeks until Christmas, I have started to send Christmas cards to my international friends.

Holiday

I have recently returned from holiday, enjoying what was left of the nice weather (quite lucky, not much rain during the daytime), avoiding the major gales hitting the southern part of the UK, visiting new places and revisiting others.

 

Was too late to look around the inside of this Priory (Lindisfarne is a tidal island and on that particular day, it was safe to drive across just after 3pm but we crossed nearer 4pm missing the last admission to the priory), but did venture into the castle earlier in the week.

And passing this on the way home (although it was not as nice a day, with all the rain and wind).

(made a mess of the scans so trimmed off the perforations on the image on the computer).

While I was away, I did write some letters, but with regards to a couple of them, they were posted a couple of days after finishing them because of finding a postbox (I don't like leaving letters in a postbox after the last collection for that day).

I came home to some letters too, my current pile is 6 letters to reply to with one of those replies in progress.

Distractions

I have found myself busy with distractions.... mainly stamps. I collected stamps as a child and would like to get back into it. The stamps below were some of the Canada stamps I had then. 

Consequently, I haven't been in much of a writing mood as I sort out some of the old stamps, and soak ones I recently purchased as kiloware.
With all the distractions, I even forgot to send something to The Letters Page, a journal about correspondence, with issue two being about penpals (submissions closed over a week ago). Perhaps I wouldn't have managed a single side of A4!
I have still been writing letters, but have been a bit slower than usual. I do like to reply to letters within a fortnight but have a few to reply received at the beginning of the month. I will get them sent out within the month.

September stats

I have been getting carried away with stamps. I bought some kiloware so I have started to sort and soak them.

September stats:
Out - Postcards: 17, Letters: 24
In - Postcards: 80, Letters: 19.

Mixture of stamps

I bought some stamps from a collectibles dealer and have only just got round to looking properly at them.

I haven't been collecting UK definitives... but do know some people collect them.

Some are regional definitives.

Some US stamps.

On Stamps

When I was a child, I remember liking the stamps on the post my mother received, including letters from her brother in Australia. I decided to collect stamps and had a world album book with the quadrille paper, sticking stamps in with those pesky hinges. Stamps were removed from paper n the bath, with me also in the bath, playing with the stamps as they came off the paper. I bought stamps from a little market stall, and from a big chain newsagents/bookseller (they still do collector albums, stamp hinges, and packs of thematic and worldwide stamps). I had penpals as a teenager and liked seeing the different stamps they used. then, with 'A' Levels and university, penpalling and stamps fell by the wayside by the distraction of studies and student social life, although my collection was kept. I had half forgotten about my collection.

In 2008, I started penpalling again and joined Postcrossing. This rekindled my interest in stamps, mainly using them and just appreciating them being used on postcards or letters to me. My son liked looking at the stamps, and was interested in having his own collection. We started him off with a world builder album and starter stamp packs but he has only put about 100 stamps in (well, when I say he, I mean me - he wasn't keen on the stamp hinge adhesive), and now his collection is neglected. Perhaps when the nights draw in more, we'll work on our collections.

I bought a newspaper in the newsagents on Monday and the customer behind me bought a postcard but also wanted a single stamp which the newsagent was unable to sell: they only sell booklets of stamps. I mentioned to her that the post office was not far, and they might still have some of the commemorative stamps issued last week, or the dragon first class stamp (one of the Welsh definitives) I showed her on a letter I was about to mail. I saw her again coming out of the post office and asked her if she got what she wanted. She told me that she bought a couple of the merchant navy ship stamps although she had to wait for another cashier to sort some out for her! She had only wanted one stamp but bought at least 2! I also mentioned to her the next issue will be dinosaurs next month.

This brings me nicely to a letter written to a stamp magazine a couple of years ago (I bought this magazine in a charity shop at the weekend). The letter commented on the observation of the lack of commemoratives on mail received. The letter then went on to blame the Machin stamps and suggested discontinuing them, replacing with a range of pictorials issued/changed regularly. However, I don't believe that would solve anything because the are a lot of people who do not buy their stamps from the post office (booklets of first or second class stamps, "only" sold in Machin designs), and do not realize that there are nice commemorative issues. I can't remember the last time I saw a poster in the post office for the special issue stamps, and sometimes the post office counter staff do not know (or do not care) when the stamps are issued.

I was talking to an old friend today who would like to take up stamp collecting again. He had a collection started about 50 years ago (and no longer in his possession) but doesn't yet know what he wants to collect this time round. My friend had some of the Wildings and earlier monarch head stamps, as well as British Empire. I am sort of a stamp collector at present, and am not really into the Machins but do know of people who are interested in collecting them. I mentioned to my friend that I will be collecting thematic stamps in the themes I am interested in anyway, and suggested to my friend that it might be a good place to start.