Series 2, Episode 11: Postage

How were postage and stamps invented?

Bonjour! It’s Nancy here – from the soon-to-be world famous pop group Nancy and the Meerkats!

Nancy-1After our first record “Put Your Paws Up” became a massive hit, we’re off on a huge tour of the UK!

We haven’t quite made it to stadium status yet – some of the venues are more Weeny than Wembley – but I’m going to be letting you know what’s been going on each day in my journal for Fun Kids!

I’m so excited for tonight’s show – we’ve packed out another venue on our sell-out tour! Although there was a bit of a problem earlier when one of our fans complained that their ticket ordered online hadn’t arrived!

She said if we don’t deliver ten tickets immediately to make up for the mistake she’d tell everyone we’d stolen her money!

I’d hate to think of our fans upset so I wanted to send her more tickets! But Big Joe had had a thought


Nancy-7Because we sent out all our tickets by recorded mail, it means we’ve got a certificate to prove they went in the post and the person has to sign for them at the other end – which we can check online!

It’s a pretty cool system actually -I guess we need to be organised with so many hundreds of tickets going out!

Big Joe had a look and could see that two tickets were sent out to the fan’s address and they were signed for! That means the person in that house actually signed a piece of paper to say they definitely received them!

We could even see the proof –  she’d signed her name “Miss K. P.”!

K.P.! Those are the initials of Kitty Perry! The festering fluff! She wasn’t confused at all
 she was just trying to make more trouble for us!

The good thing is we can see she signed for two tickets and if she wants any more then she’ll have to pay for them in the normal way. No freebies for her!

Until today I’d not really thought about how useful post marks are for checking things!

I don’t usually give it a thought when I stick a stamp on a letter or shove a packet in a letterbox but the post is definitely one of the cleverest inventions we have!

It’s weird because when I think of inventions I think of things you can hold like
 well, like my own amazing invention the hum bone! But it turns out inventions can be ways of doing things as well as objects!

Big Joe says that stamps or postmarks are simply a way of showing that the person posting the item has paid for the service and proving when it was sent.

Apparently the very first postmark, which showed the day and month of posting, was used over four hundred years ago! It was called the Bishop Mark and was introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop in 1661!

Who knew a stamp could be so helpful! As for Kitty Perry, the only thing she’s gonna be stamping
 is her feet!

Listen to this episode of Nancy and The Meerkats below


Check out Episode 12!

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