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When I was younger, I was somewhat of a stamp collector.

This picture  illustrates perfectly the way in which  I used to lay out my albums, and I recognise many of the stamps as ones that I had in my own collection.

The stamps would keep me busy for hours, and I used to let my imagination take me on all sorts of adventures.

I had a very precise method in the way that I went about my collection too.

Firstly, I would buy a bag filled with stamps from around the world, still attached to the corners of torn envelopes.

Instead of just cutting them off the envelopes, I used to soak them in water so that I could peel them back to their original state, laying them out on a tea towel to dry. 

From there, I would sort them by size, image and colour,  placing them into the plastic lined rows of my albums.

Quite often the stamps that came in these packets would be the same, but I still pored over each one, looking closely at each post mark, and wondering of the story behind it.

What letter was inside the envelope that this particular stamp was attached to? 

If it was one of Queen Elizabeth II, where in England was the stamp sent from, and to whom? 

I used to look up my Reader’s Digest Atlas Of The World, mapping out routes,  never quite able to believe that each of these stamps from such far away places was now inside my album in a small country town in Australia!

Letters fascinated me, and I used to love our daily trips to the post office.

Each time we would go to collect the mail, the postmaster would pull out all the marked envelopes from the alphabetical pigeon hole under the first letter of our name. 

She was very deliberate in her manner, and I remember the  way she would lick her index finger before commencing her precise flick, flick, flick through the pile.

There was no doubting that she took her role very seriously, and I couldn’t imagine a better job in the whole wide world.

I would spend hours at home playing ‘post office’. 

Just as with my stamp collecting, this too was a lengthy process. 

Firstly, I would cut up paper to make my envelopes, then I would look in my atlas, choosing place names, then making up surnames and addresses to match.

Once I’d made all of my letters, it was time to sort them alphabetically, and then of course practice my own flick, flick, flick through the pile as I imagined each person coming along to collect their mail from me.

What imaginative games do you remember most from your childhood?  Did you ever collect anything? (I also had a large souvenir spoon and eraser collection)