What does deltiology mean Santa?

DELTIOLOGY: A study of Postcards 

The History Society held their annual members night on December 12^th despite the inclement weather with temperatures plunging below zero. This undoubtedly affected attendance  ,  along with illness to some of our key members.

The evening began with an address by William Willis on his new book “Resolven – Then and Now ”. He explained that his main motivation for compiling this pictorial history on Resolven mainly since the second world war had been his realisation that many of the photographic record of daily life in the village was being lost as residents passed on and house clearances were simply throwing valuable historic material in the municipal skip. He also explained that features which we now view as normal quickly dissipate when shops change hands and people are unable to give a name to a character in a photograph. He also explained, that the digitalised nature of modern printing meant that everything had to be prepared in digital format and that the printer literally only produced what you had written without the need to proof read. This in his view put extra pressure on the author especially one with little experience of the format. The book has already been a roaring success with over 400 copies already being sold in the run up to Christmas.

The second contribution came from Trefor Jones. He took “The Power of 7”, as his theme. He related that 2017 was a year very rich in anniversaries, perhaps unusually so. His talk ranged from the protestant reformation, to the Russian revolutions, the NHS and the dawn of devolution in Wales.

A cameo performance by David Woosnam amounted to a Q&A session regarding who had been his famous celebrity schoolmate. Following some heavy clues, it appears that David Hamilton had the honour of being in school with another (now) Resolven based David.

Deltiology is a term which is largely unrecognised. However, Barry Flynn explained that he was a deltiologist or in common parlance a collector of post cards. He showed several albums of a collection which he had amassed over a period of some fifty years. He explained that the advent of the internet had made collection more problematic since it was quite easy to download common postcards from the web. He also stated that it was regrettable ( as was stated earlier by William Willis) that so many collections were simply being dumped.

Following some festive fare and mulled wine, the members settled down to the annual quiz. Following a request, there were some changes this year, and chocolates were not to be catapulted around the room!! Instead a team quiz based on the rules of Brain of Britain was to be used. Three correct answers from the same team resulted in the winning of a bonus Christmas cracker, which was to be taken into account in the final score. In the end TEAM A beat TEAM B by 25 points and three crackers, to 16 points and two crackers.

NADOLIG LLAWEN A BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA / MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR.