Skylark

 

"Skylark, said a dear little boy.

Pray, where do you go when you fly so high?

Skylark, say, it is true

That you sing to the angels in the sky?

If so, my Mother's an angel up there.

And we do miss her so, you see

So would you please, the next time you go up,

Take this message from Dad and me".

To follow our hostesses Beth's theme of the anniversary of the Twin Towers perhaps this card symbolises all the people who went to work that day and never returned home.

The verse is a music hall song of 1901 written by EW Rogers.

The card is unused but I would guess from the message at the top telling the purchaser that it "may now be used for communication" must put it in the years after 1902.  James Bamford began his career as a manufacturer of lantern slides and the Bamford company became one of the largest producers of model slides.  This "life-model lantern slide" is one of the many reproduced by the company on postcards.

An entry to Postcard Friendship Friday

Tropical Waters

 "This cover was taken on 'Eye of the Wind' from Jakarta to Cocos (Keeling) Islands for franking. It continued on the ship to Kenya for backstamping in Nairobi. It returned on a VC10 direct flight to Royal Air Force Brize Norton on 22nd October 1980"

I think the Cocos (Keeling) Islands is just the sort of place one thinks of when the word  tropical island is mentioned. Their tourist website calls it "Australia's last unspoilt paradise in the azure waters of the Indian Ocean".  When HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin on board  sailed here in 1836 his mind was on scientific exploration,  and resulted in his  paper on the geology of these types of islands called the "Theory of subsidence of atolls and coral reefs"

The large sailing ship on the cover is the 'Eye of the Wind', the smaller boats typical fishing boats used by the islanders. This group of 27 small coral islands in two separate atolls was one of the calling places of Operation Drake's round the world expedition; a youth project which included scientific exploration and land based community service. Over 2 years the 'Eye of the Wind' travelled 37,000 miles and 414 young people from 28 countries sailed the oceans .   The marine biologist Dr Trish Holdway whose signature is on the cover signed up for a few months and ending up spending much longer with the boat and directing research.  Maybe she saw some of the fish featured on the stamps

The 20c stamp is Amphiprion clarkii or Clark's Anemone-fish, the two 1c Forcipiger flavissimus, the Yellow Longnose Butterfly fish.  Fascinating fish so here is another

butterfly fish, featuring on one of the island of Mauritius's definitive stamps issued in 2000, the Pavillon (Forcipiger wheeleri). They live on reefs and corals using their long jaws for probing in reefs and nipping off tube-worm tentacles as well as catching small crustaceans.  And lastly

the Freckled Rock Cod (Cephalopholis Coatesi) part of the 1976 Tropical Fish issue of Papua New Guinea. This fish is another one fond tropical reefs but is also found on sub-tropical waters along the coast. It has rows of teeth so don't get too close.

An entry to Sunday Stamps whose theme this week is the Oceans

Hi Canada

The Disney characters have gone on holiday to Canada but I don't think they had good weather for when my sender, Denise sent this card her side of the country was having high winds and rain.

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a might man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawney arms
Are strong as iron bands

One of the many poems of which I only know the first two lines. In times past children would learn lots of poems by heart at school, my father had a stack of them.  This Longfellow was one. Some were his favourites he used to regularly  quote, but he could always come up with some we had never heard before.

Although this card quotes the familiar first verse it portrays one of the later ones:

And children coming home from school
Look in the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar.
And catch the flaming sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor

The card was sent on the 15th September 1905 "Just a line to say we are both well, Mother and I, the weather is fine for a wonder and we hope you both getting on all right and keep well. Uncle Aunt and ? love to Jane and Hilda"



An entry to Postcard Friendship Friday

Reunion

 

We travel the world on the web, discovering places we may never have the opportunity to visit, although one always lives in hope. I noticed yesterday that I had a new location on my visitor flags, the island of Reunion.  The present population of the island is 800,000, how intriguing that one of them ended up on my blog.    I wondered if I had any Reunion stamps and I did, but not may, here are three of them.  The first two are definitives from 1907 showing a map of the island (which lies in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar). 

And this one is from the 1933 definitive series showing the Cascade Salazie, known as the bridal veil because of the effect as it flows down the hillside.  Thanks to wikipedia I find that the greatest rainfall over 24 hours ever recorded in the world was on this island, 73 inches, which happened in 1952. The Cascade must have been quite a sight on that day.

What a pity I do not have any of the early aerial stamps for Reunion was the birthplace of the pioneer aviator Roland Garros.  It looks a beautiful place

An entry to Sunday Stamps

Skelwith Bridge

Royal Mail postboxes are painted every three years and the turn of this one outside the Skelwith Bridge Hotel in the Lake District has come. They always looked intensely red and glossy when first painted. But this one is unusual because

 Post Box Number LA22 171

it has had its crown and cypher painted gold. Normally this embellishment is just painted the same colour as the post box and only painted gold when the postbox is historically significant. I have no idea what this ones claim to fame is, maybe it was one of the first George VI boxes to be installed (they used up the George the V boxes first so it was not until 1937 that the ones with his number on appeared).  Whatever the reason  it looks very striking.

Josselin, Brittany

A view of Josselin and its castle form the River Oust which at this point forms part of the Nantes to Brest Canal.  The working barges lay by the side and the woman in the bottom corner is involved in some sort of occupation; I wonder what. The postcard was sent in 1903 before the divided back so our sender writes kisses on this side

and sends to Madame Finot-Carquet on the other. The definitive stamp, designed by Paul-Joseph Blanc shows a winged women carrying the scales of justice who is looking in the mirror of truth and has two nice cancels, one as it leaves Josselin and other when it arrives at its destination - Verdun.

A card where Josselin's medieval château takes centre stage. This view from the canal gives a fairy tale aspect, although this is a castle that was built to be impregnable. The town of Josselin is designated a "little city of character" and is a popular tourist destination for its pretty half-timbered houses and other attractions which

  this card celebrates with its picture cancellation.  The card was sent in July 1979 when our sender is enjoying a holiday. The stamp of course is one of the many Marianne depictions, this one designed by Piere Gandon and taken from David painting in the Louvre of the Sabine women.

An entry for Postcard Friendship Friday