ON THE morning of September 8 I bought some stamps. “They’re the new ones,” the sales assistant in the Post Office told me, handing over a book of eight purple stamps. “They are barcoded so that bit goes on the envelope as well.”

Of course I didn’t know it at the time, but the stamps, bearing the Queen’s head, would take on a special significance that day - the day of her death.

I have been using stamps bearing the profile of Queen Elizabeth ll all my life. Over the decades I have received thousands of letters with her head on the stamps.

Now, following her death after a reign of more than 70 years, Royal Mail will stop producing these stamps and will feature our monarch King Charles lll.

It’s a small thing, a change in stamp design, but it signifies a bigger change, and one which - even to those who, like me, take only a passing interest in the monarchy - brings a certain amount of sadness.

I have grown up with Queen Elizabeth on the throne. She has always been there, a non-political figurehead who ruled the country through thick and thin. Although she wasn’t a decision maker in terms of our lives, just having her there has been strangely comforting.

I remember as a ten-year-old child being taken by my parents, along with my siblings, to see the Queen and Prince Philip visit York in 1971. But of course it wasn’t Philip we all wanted to see, it was Her Majesty.

I saw her again in York, in 2012, when, not knowing she was visiting, I was suddenly surrounded by gathering crowds.

I’ve never been a flag-waver - quite the opposite - but on the latter occasion, I had to admit, it was quite something to see, in the flesh, that person whose head adored the bank notes and coins in my purse and the stamps I stuck on letters.

As political leaders have come and gone, the Queen has been a constant. The monarchy itself has been modernised and overhauled from the stuffy, regimented affair it once was, and the Queen has gone along with that. She has had ups and downs, and very public family upheavals, but throughout she has exhibited strength and calmness. She always appeared unruffled, no matter what was happening in her life or across the country. Whatever the circumstances she just got on with it and I think that is what most people admired most about her.

The Queen has been at the helm the whole of my life, 61 years. For many people it’s a decade longer than that. Of the many citizens interviewed in the wake of her death, countless said: “I thought she would go on forever.” Perhaps, even though none of us is immortal, we all felt that.

It will take time to get used to having a king, and a King Charles to boot. We last had a King Charles in the 17th century and to me, King Charles conjures up images of a man in a long curly wig, breeches and tights, not a 21st century man in a suit. Although we’ve always known that Charles would at some point in his life take over as king, it feels odd and will take some time for the nation to get used to.

Queen Elizabeth’s shoes are big shoes to fill, as Charles knows, but I have no doubt that he will rise to the challenge. As he said, he has many decades of his mother’s reign to inspire his future.

I look forward to seeing his head on my postage stamps.