Card of the Day - 2024-03-22

Brooke Bond A Journey Downstream
Brooke Bond [trade : tea : UK] "A Journey Downstream" (1990) 23/25 - BRM-69

So to close out our week, let us meander off gently downstream, our toes in fresh water, heading towards who knows where, or what. or who ......

And it also seems fitting that there is the name of another body of fresh water, a "stream", in the title of this set. For a stream is described as being a small and narrow river. However there is something else about it too, but that is only discussed about when we talk of a stream of air, because it also means that the stream is in continual motion. And that takes us back to our babbling brook, a whole week ago.

This card also tells us of a success story, for "after 140 years the first salmon began to return to the Thames in 1974".

This set only appears in our original British Trade Index part IV, where it is described as :

1990-1 A Journey Downstream. Nd. (25)*

The * signifies that the set was also issued as what is known as a "joined pair", a larger card on which are printed two of the cards. The idea was that the collector cut them out by hand, but reputedly the new machinery at the factory could not handle the smaller sized standard cards, and this the solution that was found.