COVER N. 554 - GEORGIA

Postmark: Georgia Tiblisi 15.01.2025

Posted on the 15th January; Received on the 22nd January 2025

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Georgia. The country which has been on the news quite often lately, because of the huge pro-democracy and pro-Europe demonstrations following political decisions by the government, whose legitimacy is also questioned, that were considered to tip the scales down to the side of its imperialist and bellicist neighbour...

Think of it as a confrontation between two of the country's children: Joseph Stalin and Khatia Buniatishvili... I, for one, know who I would vote for...

The Phantom was again on the march through the Caucasus, it seems, for a letter from him, postmarked from Georgia's Capital, Tiblisi,  dropped into my (rather humid, unfortunately) letterbox today. Danke sehr, Alex!

Again stamps open my eyes to the best man can produce. I had never heard of Lado Gudiashvili, I think. But a quick search on the internet yielded images of absolute beauty in a style that, to me, looks like an amalgamation of much of the best the 20th century had to offer on canvas, from Modigliani to Picasso, from Souza-Cardoso to Rivera.

Lado Gudiashvili (1896 - 1980) first studied painting in Georgia but as many an  aspiring painter of the early 20th century fulfilled the dream of going to Paris, where he arrived in 1919 and where he'd stay until 1926 perfecting his art, until his return to Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union.

There, confined within the official straightjacket of Social Realism, he developed a flair for fantasy and myths as a creative escape to the imposed norm.

In 1946, on request by the Catholicos patriarch, he started a set of frescoes  on the inside of a  church in Tiblisi, a commission which would be halted before being completed and which would grant him the expulsion from the Academy of Arts and the Union of Painters, in 1948, under the accusation of being a formalist...freedom of speech and creation at its best….

On 27JAN2020, Georgia Post issued the single 3 Lari stamp souvenir sheet, of which three were used on this cover. The stamp features a photograph of the painter with the legend Georgian Outstanding Figure below his name.

As a curious note, it should be noted that the stamp is labelled as a 2019 issue although it was only officially circulated as of January 2020…

COVER N. 494 - FRANCE

Postmark: Musée de La Poste Paris 08.07.2024

Posted on the 8th July; Received in (?) August 2024

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On the 24th November, this year, Lucy will be 50 years old... plus some 3.2 million years, for that is the estimate age of the fossilised hominine skeleton (or,  rather, 40% of it) that Prof. Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray discovered at Hadar, in Ethiopia.

This finding filled an important gap in the materialisation of evidence of the transition to bipedalism which led to the emergence of Man, as we now know it.

The discovery of such a large quantity of remnants from a single hominine - an Australopitecus afarensis, to be more precise -  skeleton that old was such an extraordinary occasion that the team involved in the unearthing of it had an all night long party on the night of the first day of excavation.

All through the long and lively night, the famed Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamons" was played several times, what lead to someone having the  idea of naming the skeleton after the hero of the song. (This of course goes to prove that Palaeontologists are people of good taste....)

At the time of the finding, Lucy was the oldest hominine fossil ever found, but since then others have been discovered, with particular relevance to the case of Lucy's cousin Ardi, who at 4.4 million years old is the holdera of the record for the oldest hominine skeleton in existence.

Lucy was taken to the United States to be "recomposed" as best as possible and she is now kept at the National Museum of Ethiopia, at Addis Ababa.

Un grand merci Roland, for this very fine cover, obliterated with a postmark from the Musée de la Poste, in Paris.

The 50 years of the discovery of Lucy are the subject of the 1,96 € stamp, issued on 24JUN2024, illustrated with a rendition of what Lucy would supposedly look like.

The stamp is cancelled with a postmark from the Musée de la Poste, in Paris, an institution whose origins can be traced back to the Musée Postale de France, founded in 1946, thanks to the perseverance of Eugène Vaillé, a librarian with the French Postal Administration of the time.

COVER N. 488 - FRANCE

Postmark: La Pétanque, sports de mediterranée - 13 La Ciotat  - la Poste - 1er jour 05.07.2024

Posted on the 5th July; Received on the 11th July 2024

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It was a hot summer afternoon, one of those scorching dry afternoons that are becoming more and more frequent along the south of Europe. We were somewhere in France, my sister, my brother in law and their two young boys and my wife and I with our two daughters. These were the 90s of last century and the cars we had did not have the comfort of air conditioning... mine was a Fiat Uno, my sister's I can't really remember but even if bigger,  there was also no ac in it, whatsoever.

We needed an urgent break in the shade, and also to get some water,  so when we saw a  public water fountain by the side of the road we immediately decided it was time for a stop, to freshen up.

Behind the fountain there was this park with huge trees that generated some much appreciated shade, and below the trees there were  a couple of clearly defined and very smooth fine gravel rectangular areas, which I noticed but didn't care much about, since my priority was the water and the opportunity to wet my head to try and alleviate the effects of the very uncomfortable heat.

Children had the priority, of course, and after the four of them had drank as much water as they wanted, we grown-ups started to fill in our bottles and wet ourselves in the head and face, while they all went to play in the park. 

All of a sudden loud shouts were heard  and, by the tone of it, we immediately understood that these were not an expression of any friendly welcome....

We looked around: at the edge of the park, our four little pests were all very still inside one of the gravel grounds, wherein clear marks of their footprints and dragged feet were quite conspicuous. On the corner of the ground there was this gentleman who was shouting at them. I got it all clearly, then: the smooth even surface the children had just destroyed was a Pétanque ground and now it had to be levelled again with the instrument that the gentleman was holding in his hand.

I went to him and asked for his forgiveness and offered to level the ground again if he would let me do it with the tool he had, but he just looked at me and told me to get the children off the ground, and that he would do the levelling again (clearly he didn't trust my ability to do it...). Understandably he was not in the best of moods, so after apologising again, I did as told and led the offenders back to the cars, and off we went.

Un grand merci, Eric, for this FDC dedicated to that quintessential French sport and pastime: La Pétanque.

La Pétanque is one of those sports that I assume everybody is familiar with, since games involving impelling  balls towards a target, are an highly popular concept in all its derivations like bowling, bawls, etc.

Still I had no idea of its formal origin, which Eric informed had taken place at the French city of La Ciotat, near Marseille, from where he kindly took the trouble to send the cover, as attested by the first day postmark.

With my curiosity fuelled in by Eric's hint and by the beautiful stamp on the cover,  I went and checked the Wikipedia entry on the sport to learn that it had a very interesting origin.

Turns out that the original sport was called Jeu Provençal and even if the objective was the same as that of the Pétanque, putting your ball the closest possible to the target ball, the throwing method differed since, in this original version, the player would have to run three steps before throwing the ball (quite akin to bowling, again, I think).

Since a well known  player of the time from la Ciotat, Monsieur Jules Lenoir, had to stop playing because his rheumatism prevented him from running the required three steps, a friend of his came up with this revised version of the game, played in a court that was half the length of that of the Jeu Provençal, and where the players had to throw the ball from a stand still position, inside a delimitated area.

This revised version of the game was called "pieds tanqués" (planted feet), which over time would evolve into the designation in use today: Pétanque.

The very nice 1,96€ stamp was issued on 05JUL2024 as the French contribution for the 2024 Euromed common issue, themed on Sports of the Mediterranean, and it shows a couple of pétaque balls, as well as the little target ball, over a ground like the one my daughters and their cousins played hell with. On the background a player wearing a beret (which immediately tells us where we are) throws another "boule".

As I mentioned above the letter was postmarked at the place where the game originated, La Ciotat.

The celebratory postmark features a pair of pétanque balls in which the engraved groove pattern that makes it possible to distinguish the balls of the different players (I mean those they throw, of course 😀....) is clearly visible as well as the smaller target ball, called "cochonnet". On the background two tall palm trees again remember the viewer that we're talking south here....

Unfortunately, as usual with French FDCs there is a totally unnecessary mechanical obliteration on the stamp, which does not add anything to the cover, on the contrary....