The weather today has that sort of indeterminate quality which gives it the effect of belonging in a climatic waiting room while it decides what to do.

We have had gleams of sunlight but the clouds have settled in while giving glimpses of something more positive in the west – although thinking about it my sense of direction as I look towards the sea is based on my position in Cardiff rather than here in Catalonia – so I’m probably looking south at the signs of the better weather. My sense of direction was ever suspect!

My cycle riding has now come down to just €46 a jaunt and I am determined (if I write it down it seems more real) to make this sum even less.

I have to say that the pressing realities of cycling (even in my domesticated fashion) are to the forefront of my experiences. I do not consider myself to be exactly gaunt, I am, to put it mildly “well fleshed out” but that is not a protection against the exquisite discomfort of the saddle. How, in the name of the living god, to cyclists manage to complete hours in the saddle? Do they administer narcotics to their backsides? And what about their fertility? You cannot persuade me that their reproductive capabilities are not in some ways compromised by the activity of the lower body while cycling. I muse thus as someone forced to these considerations by the physical realities of cycling transportation.

While I have the car and physical capabilities to allow me to continue driving I will only ever regard cycling as a necessary evil. And even this I am prepared to re-examine in the light of any plausible evidence to the contrary!

I intended to cycle to a far distant (i.e. more than 10 minute walking time away) restaurant for lunch, but forgot to take the lockable chain with me. As someone who has had two bikes stolen some time ago I do not intend to chance fate with this one. The fact that there were few people about and the chances of something being taken are small does not convince me that it would be safe so I returned home and made myself one of my famed (at least by me) concoctions (always including beans of some sort) which are (more or less) healthy. And cheaper than even a menu del dia!

Today saw the appearance in my letter box of three new First Day Covers which are sent to me by the Philatelic Bureau to continue my collection started years ago in Britain.

I collect these for the philatelically inept reason that I find them aesthetically pleasing and I often think that the stamps that the Post Office issues are some of the best design to come out of Britain today.

I have simple demands for a successful stamp:
1 It must commemorate something significant. (Not the latest progeny; the tenacious grip on life of; some social incident in the life of some parasitic family which has nothing to do with a democratic state.)
2 It should exhibit artistic integrity.
3 It should have an immediate impact.
4 It should look significant on an envelope.
5 Artistic qualities should override the impact of 1. above.

For me, one of the most successful stamp issues which fulfilled all the conditions above was David Gentleman’s stamps issued in 1976 to commemorate social reformers. I can still remember my shocked admiration when I first saw these stamps which were not only individually exciting but were also interesting when seen on a sheet. A restrained use of colour but a sure touch of imaginative and design genius to choose an iconic image to encapsulate the essential features of the individual reformers. A triumph of a set!

The sets issued over the last year or so have been a mixed bunch from the sinister failure of the set for the Scout Centenary in July and the over fussy and disappointing set of UK Bird Species in Recovery in September to the partial success of Beside the Sea Side in May with some exceptional images.

2008 started with the fun if irrelevant issue of Ian Fleming’s James Bond book covers in January; the effective but aesthetically limited illustrations of the kings and queens of the houses of Lancaster and York in February to the most successful set in my view, the stamps issued to mark the Handover of the Olympic Flag from Beijing to London in August. These stamps are design at its best – striking images beautifully presented with an inspired choice of parallel images from London and Beijing.

My two favourite stamps from this year however were from the Air Displays issue in July: the 1st class stamp and the 56p stamp. The 1st class stamp is reminiscent of one of the Battle of Britain stamps with four planes in monochrome and the jets of trailing colour in bright red and blue. It works as a compelling abstract design as well as a clear pictorial representation.

The 56p stamp shows five Vulcan bombers again in monochrome and looking like alien craft high in the sky. The design has a stark beauty and equilibrium and is a powerful other worldly statement about the whole concept of flying.

The designs for the last few years for Remembrance Day are difficult for me to evaluate because of my fundamental difficulties with the whole concept of the idea of a Remembrance Day itself.

I do not for a moment ignore the horror and suffering that the First World War has come to represent and neither do I underestimate the human qualities of the men who were involved in that conflict. What I find difficult to accept is that Remembrance Day works. I am not sure that it does much more than allow a series of very moving but essentially empty gestures to take place – and then we carry on as if our participation in Remembrance Day itself was an end in itself. Where is the remembering on November 12th when the silence on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is lost in the normal noise of everyday life?

Artistically though (how hollow that sounds when you measure the dead from the futile battles on the Western Front) how do the stamps work?

2008 is the 90th Anniversary of the end of the First World War and brings to an end a three year series of issues to commemorate Remembrance Day which have used the design concept of the poppy as its basis.

The first stamp in 2006 showed seven poppies whose stems were make from barbed wire: stark stamps in black and red with the queen’s head in silver.

The stamp in 2007 showed a view of the open petals of the poppy taking up most of the stamp with what appeared to be the black seed centre of the flower actually a battlefield with small silhouette figures charging towards the observer. The same colour scheme was retained with red, black and white with a silver head.

This year’s stamp ends the series with a side view of the poppy, this time with a sliver of extra colour for the stem and the face of one of the killed as a faint ghost like suggestion on one of the petals.

These stamps are undoubtedly effective and I find them moving and poignant, but there is a guilt behind my appreciation. The beauty of the stamp images are like the regimented and beautifully kept crosses in the battlefield graveyards they become acceptable images of what was grotesque horror and wicked, wicked waste.

Look at the world today and repeat

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Then try and believe it’s true.