Collecting stamps, delighting in maps, and taking risks

Do children still collect stamps? And when I ask that question, I have in mind a reasonably serious collection. Well, I do not know, but somehow I doubt it. There are too many counter–attractions. I mean, you cannot be ‘interactive’  with stamps, and there is nothing ‘virtual’ about them – they are so not cool!

As an adult, I have no interest in stamps, but as a boy I took much pleasure in slowly building up a collection of British stamps. And if that sounds dull, it was not so to me at the time. Moreover, it might even be described as a small manifestation of that passion for collection without which our towns and cities would be greatly impoverished for the want of museums and art galleries. How my enthusiasm for stamp collecting began, I cannot now remember. Did the Eagle comic devote some space to the subject? If so, it is lost to my memory.

Anyway, at school the geography teacher, Mr Duly, started a stamp club. One evening, a fellow enthusiast, Nigel Gosling and I brought in our collections for the other members to look at. After our albums had been passed around, Mr Duly said, “I think we can say that Gosling and Hart are not just stamp collectors, but philatelists.” Well, the envy was palpable, and I remember even at the time thinking that it was not very wise of Mr Duly    to praise us in this way. After all, if Gosling and Hart now walked on the ‘higher plains of philately’, where did this leave the others? Humiliated and discouraged, I shouldn't wonder.

Expectations at my secondary modern school were very low, and homework – as I remember – practically non–existent. However, I loved drawing maps, and would do some at home. These were marked by Mr Duly, and then handed back to me. I nearly always got √ 10/10 VG, on account of the carefulness with which they were drawn. And as none of my classmates saw them, there was no danger of being raised to the status of cartographer! In particular, I loved Ordnance Survey maps, with all their symbols and formalised graphic representations. The map may not be the territory, and the symbol not the thing symbolised. But to me as a boy this presented no problem, and I delighted in such things       as the red circle ● (station open), empty circle ○ (station disused); the fine hatchings delineating embankments; and soft yellow representing sand. All these conjured up landscapes  in my mind in a far more exciting way than photographs; and even those landscapes that I knew became – somehow – more atmospheric as a result of the map. The landscape and the map were both tactile, but in quite distinct ways.   

One more thing about Mr Duly.  I was summoned to his room one day and caned because he had seen me jump off the platform of a moving bus (as it was taking a left corner at a right angle). Now, this was not a wise action on my part: I fell over and sustained a badly bruised knee. However, I felt a sense of considerable injustice. I am quite sure that Mr Duly undertook this action off his own bat, and had not first consulted the headmaster. So I wonder now, did he take pleasure in giving me pain? In the light of what we now know – but was then hidden to the point of invisibility – his action can be classed as physical abuse (possibly accompanied by other unhealthy attractions to me as a boy). I do not know, and I may do his memory an injustice, but his action certainly vitiated our relationship.

However, children will take risks – whatever the fears of their parents. It is in their nature, and – from time to time – fatalities will inevitably occur. However, would we rather have dull, ‘play–safe’, conformist children? I think not. The tragedy is that we now have a combination of passive risk–taking – drugs – and extreme active risk–taking – as of tomb–stoning (jumping of high cliffs into the sea) and parkouring (jumping from one high building to another). It might well be wondered to what extent the ‘cotton–wooling’     of children has contributed to these extreme activities, and has fostered a heightened desire of the natural tendency to rebel. True or not, no measures will entirely circumvent the willfulness, waywardness, and sometimes sheer bloody–mindedness of adolescents and teenagers. These and other (often deeply frustrating and maddening!) characteristics are permanent aspects of the cultural environment of the young and impressionable.