I snaffled the above advert out of the 1950s (replica) Eagle Annual that I insisted my eldest daughter bought for me last christmas, “What do you want for christmas ?” she asked, expecting me to ask for aftershave or similar, “An Eagle Annual from the 1950s” I replied, “It’ll be ace”
I can’t pretend that I was ever an Eagle reader, I wasn’t, but the comics I read had the same cheap adverts in them and I actually replied to the one above, it didn’t change right through the 50s and 60s, you could still buy a big envelope full of stamps and an album for one shilling – so I did.
And when it arrived I stared at the fifty stamps therein and even at that early age I could tell that I had been had, had for a one shilling coin of the realm, for these stamps were not of the postage variety, these stamps were postage stamp shaped and to all intent and purposes could have passed muster as a postage stamp, if the bearer was an idiot, and blind, and had never seen a postage stamp in his life.
These were made-up stamps, someone with a printing press sat in a small room in Eastrington, Goole all day long churning out sheets and sheets of pretend postage stamps from country’s that no schoolboy had ever heard of, Umbongo was one, a postage stamp with a vivid green picture of a leopard on it and a price tag of “Four Moon Units”.
Made-up postage stamps from made-up country’s they were, one shillings worth, come to think of it, it wasn’t crime of the century was it, I mean how rich could you get by spending 60 hours a week cutting out fifty little postage stamps and putting them in envelopes for a shilling a time ? Not very rich is the answer.
But at least I knew they were from made-up country’s for in the 1960s our education included a smattering of world geography and I knew for a fact that these were made-up country’s for I could find them on no atlas in my possession.
My own children have no such grand education.
Just yesterday morning when I was taking Amanda to her place of work she asked where Manchester was, was it south of Leeds ?
Technically of course the answer is “Sort of”, for it is more to the south than Leeds, but its mainly West, its on the west of the country while Leeds is in the middle, these things I explained to her and I could tell that this was unexplored territory, when she said “south” she was thinking more in terms of “London”.
We got to discussing geography and her next question was a strange one, “Why is Britain always the last country on the map ?”
I asked her to explain, the question revolved around the fact that our country always seemed to be on the left hand side of all the maps of the world that she’d seen, with all the rest of the country’s to the right – this was no map of the world that I could relate to and I began to wonder what the hell they had been teaching them at that church school we lied so well to get them in to.
Truth is the Americas are always on the left of a map of the world, China on the right, thats because the international date line is in the middle of the Pacific, these things I explained to her, she greeted the knowledge as if I’d taken to speaking in Swahili or Ancient Norse, it simply wasn’t true she said, Britain is always on the left hand side of every map of the world.
The discussion continued for the whole of the twenty minute journey and after I’d dropped her off I had to argue with myself to make sure I was right, its the Americas to the left, China to the right, of course it is, and one third of the world is coloured in red because its in the Empire, yes, of course.
Maybe I need to check an atlas, its been a while since I looked at one – after all, this is the daughter who is just about to start year two of her University Degree Course in Law, she must be slightly intelligent…
Please tell me she doesnt think a map of Europe is the whole world, (even though it should be)?
You know, I never thought of that, I think you might be onto something.