Saturday 25 February: a French-British-Australian salad.
Since 2009 the Greek letter phi has been forced as the official symbol on French program stamps.

Truncated poster of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign, entitled Disobedient/Rebellious Franceffiche. In stickers and posters it can be found on many urban public and private furnitures (campaign material website).

Since Autumn it's the symbol of the far right politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the current presidential election in France...

On the other of the world multimillionaire CEO of the Australia Post decided to leave its office... after years of philatelic and unions outrage concerning his salaries, months of failed Senate inquiries and weeks of suddenly great media attention.

Presented on Norvic Philatelics blog the new postal rates of Royal Mail seem to indicate the operator is following the Brexit tempo: moderate penny increase for interior mail, huge for international... Mail to Europe being the most punished: +10 pennies!

Tuesday 28 February: Continental exhibition in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon next June.
From Thursday the first to Sunday fourth of June 2017, the French overseas collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon will host a continental interamerican exhibition after the successful 2014 edition.

An occupation stamp, very badly perforated, stuck on an envelope during the first episode (BBC One, Sunday 19 February 2017).

Adapted from the spy novel by Len Deighton, published in 1978: Douglas Archer, one of the best inspectors of Scotland Yard, is forced to make his service works, hoping for a better future, while under the scrutiny of the SS ; the dreadful organisation having begun the census of jews.

The cover of the novel already used alternate philately to strike the potential reader (amazon.co.uk).

An investigation into a murder by gun shot imposes Archer to work for a German military intelligence officer, sent in urgency by Berlin... Who was the victim? What is he so important? At the same time, London is preparing to host a visit of Soviet dignitaries: what will become of Operation Barbarossa in this timeline?

Marlag stands for Marinelager, a camp for all kind of seamen, both Royal Navy captured and merchant marine civilians, hold because they could help the war effort by manning ships sailing to North America to get supplies.

But the civilians got their own camp, Milag for Marineinterniertenlager, after members of the United States and Switzerland's Red Cross Committees visited Marlag.

Tuesday 7 March: Netherlands philately summarised on one postcard.
Thank to philatelist Postcrosser, I received a card franked with three kinds of stamps that NL Post is proposing these past years.

Thank you Shelly!

On the left side, make-up stamps in the design approach the Netherlands are famous for now. In the center the lower stamp of a 2006 illustrated minisheet on Schoonhoven, a historic center of silver craftmanship.

An inspired card printed by editor Greetz, the same as the personalised stamp on the other side of the card. Liverpool and Beatles lover will notice...

Finally, on the right side, a personalised stamp promoting stamp collecting, mimicking the unused war moral poster of Britain: Keep calm and collect stamps.

Saturday 11 March: French colonies' challenges to postal historians.
Two British publications proposed ideas that could motivate collectors to search the French colonies again. First, in the January issue of Gibbons Stamp Monthly, Michael Round ended his stamp studies of the French Territory of the Afars and Issas (1967-1977) with the goal to find cancelled items from all five post offices of the country to become independent Djibouti, including illustrated "flammes" of Djibouti.

In the February issue of The London Philatelist, Staffan Ferdén studied three covers to a Swedish naval officer cancelled in Stockholm and who found him in Tahiti, in the Society Islands, during the 1883-1885 world tour of the HMS Vanadis.

The author is known for his classic Swedish maritime mail collection and studies (to became a book in 2019 - a summary of a recent presentation is available on the Stockholmia 2019 exhibition website: click "Read more" on the 17 December 2016 article).

Why those Tahiti cover among all mail received and sent by the crew, including Prince Oscar Bernadotte? Because Papeete was, with Egyptian Port Said at the entrance of the Suez canal, the only places where there was no Swedish consulate to take care of the mail.

The article is dense, but succeeds to give information on the cruise, the geopolitial situation of this part of Polynesia under French rule since 1880 (after a protectorate period), and all the maritime routes that existed in the 1880s in order to guess which ones the three letters had taken to find Lieutenant Fredrik Peyron.

Conclusion for the week end.
The author of a Sower specialised blog proposed yesterday something surprising and a personal rendition of what may have happened to a countess living in Lorraine when she sent a registered postcard to a friend in Edinburgh, Scotland. Étiquette.