Stamp Collecting (1958-59)

IT is the general belief today that the idea of stamp collecting was originated by Sir Rowland Hill. This, however, is incorrect and all credit for this fascinating hobby must go to Mrs. Phyllis Atelee, known to her friends as Phil Atelee.

The popularity of this new hobby spread tremendously so that within a few months no less than seven people had taken it up.

Unfortunately this illustrious hobby appealed only to a limited class - the ists; any ist following the ideas of Phil being automatically known as a Phil Atelee-ist.

Soon other countries adopted the idea of issuing postage stamps; for example France. In France the symbol of postage was a wooden or timber post - le timbre-post.

Because other countries then issued stamps, different pages in the album had to be allotted to the stamps of different countries, and, as you will know, the French word for country is le bol (countries les bols) and therefore the pages had lesbols at the top to show to which countries the stamps belonged to - later this was Anglicised to labels.

At this time glue was considered unsuitable for affixing stamps to the pages and, therefore, through the marvels of modern science, the stamp hinge was invented, which in itself was all right but why was it called a hinge? Who wants to open a stamp?

It was soon realised that a new method had to be introduced so that stamps could be easily separated. Mr. Perf, an Asian, thought of the method by which stamps had milled edges and could easily be torn apart. This became known as the Perf method or Asian method the Perf or Asian method.

Stamp collecting is the king of hobbies and hobby of kings. What could be better than spending hours of tedious work putting stamps in and taking stamps out? What could be better than looking at rows of bits of coloured paper? Stamp collecting fills me with awe - it's awful.

V. BRYANT, 3A (Secretary of the Stamp Club)