Ship of the desert

 

One of two memorable camel encounters. This was on one of my short trips to India. In Rajasthan, we stopped at this beautiful hotel. It was one of the Heritage collection we'd been staying in, which were old Maharaja palaces, rich in history and full of character. In the evening they arranged this trip which involved a camel with a trailer upon which was a mattress on. We laid down, staring up at the stars while the dromedary towed us into the desert where we stopped for tea. A magical experience.

The second camel encounter was during our Red Sea dive holiday. We went out into the Sinai Desert on a really touristy evening trip. I should have hated everything about this but I loved it. Sitting by a fire, in the peaceful desert, then they made us ride the wretched things

A little red

 

A one cent stamp from British Guiana. No not that one, this is worth a bit less money, but I bought this to celebrate the fact that I do now own 1/80,000th of the rarest most valuable item by weight in the world. To celebrate my acquisition I popped up to London to view the item itself, the famous British Guiana 1c Red Magenta. Here's an arty (or crap depending on how  you look at it) photo of the stamp (worth about £8mil) with my ghostly reflection. On this same day, I tracked down the location of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues video and visited St Martin's in the Field where Robert Boyle (of Boyle's law, very important in diving) is interred. 

Herpetological ambitions

When I grew up I wanted to be ... A herpetologist. Was never going to happen but first part of the plan was to make my dad and grandad build me a greenhouse in the garden at Warlingham. 

Thriller to Manilla

 

A first-day cover. I had no intention of collecting these when this all started but some are too interesting to miss. And just how much excitement can one piece of paper evoke? This little envelope was one of 110,000 items onboard 'China Clipper' registration NC14716 – a Martin M-130 four-engine flying boat, when it completed the first airmail cargo flight across the Pacific Ocean from Alameda, California to Manila after travelling via Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. It was the first commercial flight across the Pacific and marked the dawn of a new era of flight. The aircraft later crashed on approach to Trinidad! Historynet has a great write up on the flight and its treacherous start. 

I flew to Manila once, in January 2014, on one of my ‘top ten Virgin Atlantic moments’. Flying with just three other passengers on an empty Airbus A340, we were headed down there for heavy maintenance, but also delivering aid for Typhoon victims. It was a crazy trip that included dwarf wrestling, a street called ‘The Axis of Evil’ and a trip home via Tokyo. 

China Clipper sets off from San Francisco with my stamp onboard

On the ground in Manilla

New Forest, old photo

 

Virtually on our doorstep, one of the most beautiful places. Somewhere I used to go as a teenager (although the only photo I can find of those times is below which shows my dad, watched by my brother Steve and his friend Steve Grant, tossing a caber. The second photo was taken in 2021, Sue and I on a lovely glamping trip to Burley.

A little VC-10-derness

 

So went the advertising slogan. I actually don't know if aircraft have slogans anymore? But the VC10 was a beautiful, very noisy, UK built icon of its age. I remember as a teenager, trying to get to sleep at home in Warlingham at 10:30pm when the BA VC-10 from Heathrow to Hong Kong flew over. You could still hear it half an hour later. The second photo shows me standing on the wing of the VC10 at Dunsfold. This aircraft has appeared in many TV shows and movies. I was also standing way too close to it and not wearing ear defenders when it did a full power taxi run on this day. That really hurt. 

Gypsy Moth VI

Me, nine years old, obsessed with Francis Chichester's circumnavigation of the globe aboard Gypsy Moth 4. Imagine the joy of finding this stamp, all those years later, postmarked on my birthday!

Bermuda Day

 

Bermuda Day is 28 May and traditionally the first day where the weather is nice enough to go onto the water. It's also said to be the first day when traditional Bermuda shorts can be worn as business attire. This stamp is quite special because I posted it! In November 1987 on a postcard to my mum and dad. 

Crystal Palace

 

In 1936 the Crystal Palace burned down watched by a young Bill Gunner from his bedroom window in Croydon. In the early 1960 I fondly remember feeding apple to a Toucan in the zoo in the park. Sue, less fondly, remembers getting bit by an orangutan around the same time. Neither of us had been back until this week when we went there to visit a Malaysian streetfood stall. The park hadn't changed. The concrete dinosaurs are still there. As is the bowl concert stage, where Clapton and Bob Marley among others had played,. And a lovely stroll around the foundations of the Crystal Palace itself. 

 

All that glitters

 

Here's one of the glorious Yemen golden stamps.

Yemen

The Yemen, first came to my attention in the early 80's when catering the Yemenia 727. This was the first time I came across guns, carried by their skymarshalls. This stamp was used in May 1972, a defining moment in the history of this troubled country and the outbreak of civil war. 

I decided to buy a Yemen stamp after Sue and I had a coffee in a Yemini cafe in Rottingdean. I ended up in a bidding war for a pack of stamps. Quite a few of them feature an aircraft that is crying out for an investigation. They also do very nice gold stamps. More on both these things later. 

 

Toulon, 1944

I wouldn't normally buy a stamp with a swastica on, but these are of interest to me. Toulon on the French Mediterranean coast was the headquarters of the French navy during the war. In 1944 Toulon, like most of France, was occupied by the Nazis. Among the French resistance in Toulon, my hero Jacques-Yves Cousteau. His brother Pierre-Antoine on the other hand was a Nazi sympathiser, who was imprisoned and narrowly escaped being executed for his allegiance. The fact these little bits of paper were in that city at that defining time gives me the shivers . 

An unusual stamp caught my eye

19

Bahawalpur was a city and a region in what is today known as Pakistan and the Annas currency no longer in existance. This stamp was issued in 1949. 

East meets West.

An impulsive trip to the seaside and as monument that marks the spot where the meridian line crosses the south coast. The stamps were issued in 1984, the year of Live Aid. The photo below shows Sue standing in the Eastern hemisphere, me in the Western hemisphere.