Looking back

Often my day begins with a family-shared text from my #2 son with a photo from the past, thrown up by Timehop or some such app. Usually they show my granddaughters at an early age doing something unbearably cute, or simply looking adorable, and I reflect - as always - on how time flees and folds on us.

The other morning I heard something on the radio - I was doing something else - about Germany a hundred years ago when hyperinflation after the 1914-18 war had such a drastic effect on everyday life. Apparently a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923. This reminded me of my childhood (no, no - not in 1923) when I started collecting stamps, and the long days of childhood illnesses like measles that had to be filled while strictly confined to bed, because the house wasn't really warm enough during the day to be lounging about in it and besides, an ill child belonged in bed until sufficiently better to go back to school.

Anyway, back to the stamps. I actually still have the album I put my stamps in, and I suddenly had a memory of these strange, and to me rather dull, stamps from Germany that were overprinted in shiny black ink that made a 200 marks stamp worth 2 million marks. I remembered my father telling me that this was because of their money losing value so fast that it wasn't worth reprinting the stamps as they couldn't keep pace with the rate of change. I also remember my parents telling me that this was one of the things that brought Hitler to power, and showing me that I had some stamps with his head on them. 

Looking at this double page today, I'm struck by two things: first and foremost how odd it feels to me now to see Hitler actually on stamps which I'm holding on to, and also how randomly I stuck them in the album, having no idea other than to be as neat as I could and put them in when I acquired them. I have, incidentally, no idea where they came from - though I do remember later buying little bags of stamps in a wee shop near my school.

Otherwise it was simply a horrid, wet day, growing milder as it went on. I did the shopping early as usual, had a totally leisurely breakfast, did some Italian, attended an online Vestry meeting. That over, I did some Pilates exercises and went up and down the stairs a few times just for exercise, and just before dinner got involved in an online conversation with my older granddaughter, who is turning into such an interesting person. 

And now it's past midnight and another day has scampered past ...