A STRIKING DECLINE..

I read today that the hobby of stamp collecting is having a sticky time.   It seems the number belonging to Kidstamp - an organisation for young stamp collectors - has fallen from 100,000 in the 1990s to about 1,000 today, thanks to e-mails, texting and other forms of communication taking the place of snail mail.  

Which is a pity, since I have long believed that the pace of life is dictated largely by the speed of communication available.  For example, if over 100 years ago you sent a letter to Australia, then you could be pretty sure that you might get a reply some months later, whereas these days communication is just about instant, which can lead to instant decisions which are not always the best ones.

So I`m sorry to see the decline in stamp collecting and when I read about it this morning my mind went back 60 years or more to what, with 20-20 hindsight, seemed for me to be an idyllic boyhood at Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water.  I recalled that in those days, in comics like the Hotspur or the Rover, there were always tempting advertisements inviting you to send a 1/6 postal order to some mysterious PO Box, in return for which you would receive a package containing `assorted postage stamps from across the Empire.`  

I squandered the odd 1/6  (7p) and so acquired not so much a collection, more a small gathering of stamps, but philately never really caught on in Hythe, as the rival attractions of phillumeny were more readily available.   The small boys of the village (there were about five of us) used to comb the shoreline at low tide, especially after the great liners had either arrived or just left Southampton Docks - the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, the Unions Castle liners and many more.

Our prizes were empty matchboxes, tossed overboard from those passing ships and washed ashore at the waters edge along the obviously named Shore Road - round about here:-

 Shore Road, Hythe.

We built up quite a collection between us and all these years on I still have mine although the boxes have long since gone and just the labels remain, pressed into a scrapbook.  In fact, as my phillumeny progressed, I have some complete sets that have never appeared on boxes, including a set of about 50 large sized ones on rice paper depicting scenes from the Hokkaido Road in Japan.   But the most prized ones of all are those sea-washed and tar- stained from maritime destinations the world over - from South Africa thanks to the Union Castle ships, the USA, Scandinavia and even from Argentina.

I started off this ramble bemoaning the lack of interest in stamp collecting these days and I guess the same will happen to matchbox labels as smoking becomes more and more the territory of social outcasts and no-smoking zones are springing up everywhere, even, I imagine, on cruise ships.

In a wistful moment, I wondered whether my collection had any value and a quick gander at the Internet told me that, quite possibly, one or two of my treasures might fetch anything up to 70p at auction, which won`t change my life much, so they will remain as a tangible memory of those boyhood days when children were allowed to go off beachcombing without a health and safety care in the world.