talesAplenty  © all rights reserved -  incorporated in the 1950’s - powered by hearts of oak and salty porridge

 

And now a bit more about talesAplenty ©

 

talesAplenty are unlike any other organisation. Many have said it is the figment of someone’s imagination. But we can assure you, there is nobody in our group called Dan Brown. We are a collegiate fraternity and exist purely for the benefit of genuine comradeship, and sharing of knowledge. We were founded in 1960, by two young boys from Edinburgh, Scotland. This was early one July summer evening, after the founding member had thumped young wannabe teddy boy, Danny Ferguson. This local thug had been bullying our founding member because he collected postage stamps. This act of thumping left a deep impression on our founder, as well as Danny Ferguson. After this act of putting the local thug in his place, the two young boys got together regularly to discuss their favourite stamps, hobbies, sports, and board games. Their particular philatelic purpose at that time was to collect as many stamps as possible from South Georgia and British Antarctic Territory. They also loved their favourite football teams from Edinburgh, namely Heart of Midlothian FC and Hibernian FC. The boys would swap stamps, talk about them, and also pretend they played football for their respective football teams. Even although enmity existed between other sets of football fans, none existed between the two young boys. They were brothers in arms. Over the years, as they grew up, and went their own ways, getting involved with other worldly pursuits, they never forgot the impact their friendship had on them, and on wannabe teddy boy Danny Ferguson.

 

The boys built useful lives, and, after a while,  ended up working in local government, where they learned other life enhancing skills producing nothing from anything to make more of nothing. Whilst working in local government, they met other extremely bored like minded men, and their group quickly grew to the 5 full members it has today. These 5 true men wrote a constitution, which embodies the basic principles of allegiance to no other man, and where a man’s colour, creed, sexual orientation, or ethnic origin will never matter within the group. Also paramount is being free from any political affiliation. Allegiance to, and consorting with women is however allowed, and actively encouraged wherever possible. The group vowed always to be both esoteric and exoteric in their views and beliefs.

 

We agreed our rules would always remain secret, never to be revealed, even to Freemasons or Rotarians. We have amassed a wealth of experience and skills sets to supplement our knowledge of stamps. These skills include, HR (Human Remains) Management, pipe lagging, cleaning floors and windows, providing references, addressing noisy neighbour issues, complaining about shoddy customer service, and running companies. The group have embraced transformation and engaged with onboarding, becoming experts in buzzword bingo, and have also travelled extensively, whilst writing award winning poetry.

 

Our group meets monthly in Dunblane, before the local Rotarians, but separate from them. We can be no more or less than 5. Waiting list vacancies to join are normally only open once every 4 years, unless unforeseen circumstances otherwise dictate.

 

Criteria, which are vetted, for joining our waiting list are:

 

1. A definitive knowledge of stamps from South Georgia and BAT.
2. A keen knowledge of the works of Ambrose Bierce.
3. A knowledge of the art of philavery.
4. To be an owner of the Sgt Pepper album, and to know each track intimately.
5. Be an active campaigner against noisy neighbours.
6. Have an appreciation of great books and classic movies.

 

 

Our 5 are:

 

Smiler, Toulouse, Bilbo, Bingo and Juggler.

We have served our country, we have run companies, we have managed large IT organisations, we have cleaned windows, floors and lagged pipes. We have put out fires, collected the weekly rubbish, and have arrested drunken tossers on a Saturday night.

 

And we are all still - Ticketyboo!

 

talesAplenty ©