The Error World Read Online Free PDF Page B

'Special transaction'. The stamp cards had a little information about each issue, designed, I imagine, specifically to appeal to a young mind with an insatiable appetite for facts: 'This is one of a set of six stamps depicting British Wild Flowers, issued in 1967. The design, by the Rev. W. Keble Martin, author of "The Concise British Flora in Colour"...the square-rigged, 16th-century galleon, formidable man-o'-war or merchantman, was of Spanish origin.'
    I still have the game, and I am struck by how all the instructions describe the players as 'he', and how three drawings of a dark-haired round-faced boy seemingly spellbound by the game look like me. It is also clear that the game was a propaganda exercise for Stanley Gibbons: 'Stamp collecting is a fascinating hobby that has captured people's imagination from the first,' the game's instructions begin. There is information about the formation of Stanley Gibbons in Portsmouth, and how to avoid falling prey to less reputable dealers with fakes. There is also the line that no doubt drew me in more than any other. 'On some recent British stamps where the Queen's head is reduced in size to form a small part of the design, examples are occasionally found with the head missing. Needless to say, these command a higher market price than the normally printed stamps of the same issue.'
    And there was another reason why the stamp world was calling to me. The box and instructions feature an enlargement of the Penny Black, with the letters in each bottom corner denoting'S for Stanley and G for Gibbons. But I took the initials to be mine.
    The only thing my father collected was cigar labels. Or rather he slipped them off each weekend for me, and I flattened them out and placed them in a stamp stockbook. I probably had about a hundred different types with the pictures of Cuban heroes and emblems on them, but then the collection foundered when my dad found a cigar he really
liked.
The boxes they came in were useful for storing stamps that had yet to be mounted or swapped.
    The low cholesterol salt didn't save him, naturally. And neither did the disappearance of the plump Montecristo No. zs and H. Upmanns, replaced by slim panatellas and Hamlets. Less smoke, same addiction, same awful outcome give or take a few months. Not that I knew there were only to be a few months, no more than he did. And if we both knew there were only a few months, what would we have talked about? Nothing of great value, I imagine. I didn't really understand that having one small heart attack meant that a large one was usually a matter of time. But what do you do with something terrible waiting in the wings? You certainly don't usher it in, and you can never say goodbye in advance.
    On 26 November 1973, a damp Monday six weeks after the Yom Kippur War, twelve days after the royal wedding, two days before the Christmas stamps appeared, with my father aged fifty-four, I got home from school and probably did the usual things: a bit of homework, a bit of
Nationwide.
Almost certainly I listened to my Grundig—
The Navy Lark
perhaps,
The Clitheroe Kid,
John Peel playing 'Cindy Incidentally'. And then the following morning I was aware of hushed panic, and my mother not herself, and being told dad wasn't well and I should get off to school as usual, packed lunch, Golders Green to Hampstead Tube, sweets on the way. The usual day at school. And then home to be greeted at the back door by Jonathan, eighteen.
    'Dad died.'
    I remember saying, 'What?', and was aware that what I said then would be of significance. It wasn't really a question, it was more 'He can't of.'
    'This morning. It was sudden.'
    I think I said, 'Oh no.' I entered the kitchen, and the world of Jewishness surrounded me like foam in a cavity wall. There was already some food there, supplied by a friend; it was probably traditional 'mourning food', something sweet. Soon other people began appearing, and wished me 'a long life' (trad, Jewish) and said that at