COVER N.48 - UK

Postmark: (?); 01-11-21 
Posted on the 1st November; received on the 5th November
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The sea and its dwellers. In later years attention has been increasingly drawn to them, as the effects of global warming and climate change are felt at world level and impacts in habitats become ever more apparent.

We don't own the world, and even if we like to think we are invulnerable, comfortably occupying the top of the chain, that is not so at all (and our current concerns prove the point); we are its gatekeepers, instead... and we've been failing at our job...

As I write this, Humanity meets in Glasgow ... again... and the challenges are the same (if worst)...the clock is still ticking. Let's hope we live up to our responsibilities, Kid's are right: there's no Planet B and we must manage in a systemic way our relationship with the world, for we are the only species that can influence at will its general characteristics in a swift and decisive way.

Failing that, stamps like the ones in the cover I thank Faisal for having sent me, will be issued under sad series designations, like "Former forms of sea life" or "Once upon the time on a coast near you (when the coast was much farther away...)"

The two 1st class stamps used on the cover are part of a 5 stamp strip set issued on 22JUL21, dedicated to Wild Coasts : Wildlife of Coastal UK, that besides the Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus) and the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) included the Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), the Common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) and the Spiny Spider Crab (Maja squinado).

Unfortunately the postmark on the stamps was very poorly applied... twice and can't be read, so I wasn't able to decipher where the cover was sent from.