Penny Black Stories

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The Secretary was already there and looking a bit flustered.

"Ah! Penny," he greeted me. "I need a big favour."

I'd had some experience of Pete's 'favours' before, so gave him an icy stare and said: "I'm on tea duty tonight, so I can't help by entertaining the judge all evening if that's what you want."

"No, no. That's not it. I had a call from the judge I've booked just before I left home. He fell down stairs this morning and broke his ankle. He can't come tonight."

"Oh dear!" I said. "That leaves us with nobody to judge the entries. What are you going to do?"

"Well. I thought ... err ... if you're agreeable, that you might help out there."

I wasn't quick enough to spot the trap and said: "Well, if you need somebody to help collecting in the entries while you find a member to do the judging, I'll help out of course."

"Well, rather more than that. I'm assuming you've brought an entry for our Thematic Class, but that leaves you free to judge the General and Postal History Classes. I can judge the Thematic Class - and that solves the problem."

"But ... but ..." I was not only lost for words, I suddenly realised I was being cast as a judge for the evening. I'd never done any judging before, and doubted my ability to know the difference between a plate flaw and a plate block.

"But I've never done any judging before," I managed to blurt out.

"Oh, there's nothing to it. You just fill in the marking sheet, add up the figures and the entry with the highest score is the winner." He gave me an encouraging smile. "And don't worry," he added. "I'll find somebody else to make the teas."

I never did like the job of making the teas, and the thought of avoiding all that washing up afterwards swayed me against my better judgement, and I agreed.

The other members started to arrive, and the competition entries were piling up on the table.

At half-past seven the President called us to order and announced the changed arrangements for the judging. "We have four entries in the General Class," he said, "And three in the Postal History. Unfortunately only one in the Thematic Class. Gives our Secretary an easy job as he's judging that class. But he's volunteered to make the teas at the interval. So we'll split the entries into two halves and see the Postal History and Thematic Classes first."

I spent the next half-hour looking goggle-eyed at the hotel postmarks of Egypt, a little known campaign during the Boer War, and correspondence from the Australian penal colonies.

The other members were also looking at the entries, and I found it very helpful listening to their comments.

They were clearly very impressed by the Boer War entry, though I didn't understand why because the covers were rather tatty and had a lot of disfiguring cancels and forwarding marks on them. Anyway I decided to place that first, and on the basis that hotels were more popular places to go to than penal colonies, I placed the hotel postmarks of Egypt second.

I was beginning to think that Pete was right - it was all very easy really.

We had a break for tea, and then the entries in the General Class were laid out for judging. I suddenly felt very vulnerable when I realised that both the President and the Secretary had submitted entries and I had to judge between them.

The first entry was a rather boring sixteen sheets of British Queen Elizabeth definitive stamps with small flaws and errors. Most of them I couldn't detect until a member offered me a magnifying glass. Definitely not my cup of tea ... though I had to admit that the one poured by the Secretary at the interval was not too bad!

Then I found myself looking at wartime overprints on Japanese stamps. Again very boring. Especially as I did not understand a word of Japanese. I marked it even lower than the British flyspecks.

The third entry looked more promising. A display of Swedish booklets. I liked the bright colours of the stamps and the layout was very pleasing with the booklets 'exploded' to show the way they were put together.

I moved on to the final entry and found a display of early Argentine. Now normally anything from South America reminds me of corned beef and that means I can't take it seriously - don't ask me why because that's another story! But I did find this display interesting because it captured the early history by showing the different stamp issues. I noticed that several members were paying it compliments as they looked at it, and that decided me. Argentine was the winner.

The President called us to order and asked the judges to announce the results. With some trepidation I announced those for the General and Postal History Classes. To my amazement the results were received with almost universal approval. I seemed to have got the right result, even if my reasoning was not based on sound philatelic principles. Tradition had been continued - the President had won the General Class and the Secretary had won the Postal History Class, just as in the previous two years.

The Secretary then announced he had been given the difficult task of judging the Thematic Class with one entry, and announced that: "Miss Penny Black is the outright winner with her entry entitled 'European Banking'. Unfortunately I have to depart now before the meeting ends to pick up my wife from her Church Fellowship meeting. I'm sure Penny won't mind washing up the crockery ..."

How I hate that job. By fair means or foul I'll get back at Pete for that. If I judge next year's competition I'll make sure that Australian penal colonies come out the winner. After all, that's where he deserves to be sent!