Phantom Listeners

"I liked war poetry best, the more savage the better, and knew by heart most of Siegfried Sassoon's and many of Wilfred Owen's and Robert Nichols';  and the gentle magic of Walter de la Mare worked as powerfully in the glare of the African bush as among the haunted shadows, moonlit orchards and crepuscular churchyards that inspired his muse.  Riding M'zee through the coffee plantation my sun-warmed spine would chill to a vision of a host of phantom listeners thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair; I would see, among spiky, yellow sodom-apples beside a winding path through the reserve, a bank of ancient briars so old that no man knows through what wild century roves back the rose; and the two worlds joined when a red-eyed dove puffing its iridescent breast in song would recall the smooth-plumed bird in the emerald shade, the seed of grass, the speck of stone that the wayfaring ant stirs, and hastes on.   And although the poet's twilit northern land of yew-trees and goblins, and our scorched and dappled plains and heat-stunned ridges, were as far apart in character as in distance, there lay between them a bond of magic, of the feel of things just out of sight, of the blundering owl, the four-clawed mole and the hooded bat, and their enigmatic reminder that blind as these three to me, so blind to someone I must be.

A parcel from the Poetry Bookshop was therefore the most exciting argosy to be looked for from an English mail."

The Mottled Lizard  Elspeth Huxley

The uses of philately

The judge greeted them charmingly and for half an hour Leslie and Spiro sat at his table sipping coffee while Leslie talked to him in voluble, but inaccurate Greek. ...
They returned to our table where we waited agog for the news.

'Charming old boy,'  said Leslie.  'Couldn't have been nicer.  I promised to get him some stamps.  Who do we know in England who collects them?'
'Well, your father used to,'  said Mother.  'He was a very keen philatelist when he was alive.'
'Gollys, don't say that, Mrs Durrells,' said Spiro, in genuine anguish.
A short pause ensued while the family explained to him the meaning of the word philatelist.

'I still don't see how this is going to help the case,' said Larry.  'Even if you inundate him with penny blacks.'...

For the next few days Leslie, convinced that Spiro could obstruct the course of justice, wrote to everybody he could think of in England and demanded stamps.  The result was that our mail increased threefold and practically every space in the villa was taken up by piles of stamps which, whenever a wind blew, would drift like autumn leaves across the room to the vociferous, snarling delight of the dogs.  Many of the stamps began to look slightly the worse for wear,

'You're not going to give him those, are you?' said Larry disdainfully surveying a pile of mangled, semi-masticated stamps that Leslie had rescued from the jaws of Roger half an hour previously.

'Well, stamps are supposed to be old, aren't they?' said Leslie belligerently.
'Old, perhaps,'  said Larry,  'but not covered with enough spittle to give him hydrophobia.'
'Well, if you can think of a better bloody plan, why don't you suggest it?'  enquired Leslie.
'My dear fellow, I don't mind,' said Larry.  'When the judge is running around biting all his colleagues and you are languishing in a Greek prison, don't blame me.'

'Well, dear,' said Mother adjusting her spectacles, 'I do think he may be right, you know.  After all, some of those stamps do look a little, well, you know, second-hand.'
'He wants stamps and he's bloody well going to get stamps,' said Leslie.
And stamps the poor judge got, in a bewildering variety of sizes, shapes, colours and stages of disintegration."

Birds, Beasts and Relatives  Gerald Durrell

Night Mail to Scotland

"This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb;
The gradient's against her but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily, she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Extract from Night Mail  W. H. Auden
written for the GPO Film Unit documentary "Night Mail" 1936