About 80 years ago, I was a schoolboy!
At home, we had a simple wireless, now called a radio, no TV and a telephone that was rarely used by my parents. Certainly, there were no mobile phones! So letter writing was very important and since there was no such thing as ‘Junk Mail’, one went to the letterbox in the hope of a letter from a friend. Good handwriting was important and people took more interest
in the design of the stamps on the envelope. My father used to buy a
book of 20 stamps and one day, he showed them to me and said, “DO you ever wonder where they will all end up?” That thought has remained with me ever since. Many years later, towards the end of the Second World War, I was in the British Army, camped on the blazing hot plains outside Madras, in
Southern India. There, I used to see the simple village children with their great brown eyes and gentle manners whilst their thin fathers toiled away under that hot sun and their mothers carried great loads of wood or water on their heads with graceful strides. They were so poor that I remember these scenes so vividly to this day. I have no grandchildren, but I hope that this simple tale will give pleasure to others.
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