Stamps 1

We keep finding odd things which we brought with us from Scotland but which have been hiding in cupboards and drawers. Today we found a small pile of materials which recall the time, largely at Lodge Road, when some members of the family had an interest in stamp collecting.

This is a single page torn from an album which probably belonged to Gill or I: we both collected stamps when we were young. It has many of the stamps which I remember as a small boy in Mombasa, particularly....

 ....the sets with the Queen's head and African animals - I think the one on the left is part of an older series.

There are also older stamps from the reign of George VI and....

....a single stamp from George V's time. In those days colours on the stamps seemed to be very pale, and I note that the postmark is Mombasa.

This stamp is different in that it was issued for use in Kenya and Uganda. Tanganyika didn't become British until after the end of the First World War, and George V reigned from 1910 to 1936, so the series is pre-1922 when it was mandated to Britain. After that, sets of stamps were issued to cover the three British East African territories, the colonies of Kenya and Uganda, and the UN Trust Territory of Tanganyika.

Lying loose in an envelope we found these stamps, which are unused. My father was a keen stamp collector of 'British & Commonwealth' stamps, which he kept in beautifully-tended albums, and he used to say that unused stamps had less value than used - which surprised me.