A new consignment arrived today and I spent an hour in the warehouse looking through crates of books, accompanied by what seemed to be a loop of Eminem, but turned out to be the radio. I quickly separated the wheat from the chaff and returned to the deathly quiet of my office.
Sorting through the books I found some more bizarre and intriguing bookmarks. My favourite was this one, from a 1940s book:
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It reads a little like some sort of coded message between secret service agents, or possibly lovers. I'd love to know the background to this enigmatic note.
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A tiny newspaper cutting. Who decided that it was worth cutting out and why? The 1970s used to be called the decade that style forgot, but these women look great.
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Times change but the message stays the same: come here and you'll get laid. My parents took me to Butlins when I was 12 and it bore an uncanny resemblance to a prisoner of war camp. If I'd been there longer than one night, I'd have started digging tunnels.
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There is a wonderful book called Boring Postcards published by Phaidon and, worryingly, this image would probably be too interesting to warrant inclusion. However, it's still quite a dull scene and I wonder who decided that this view would make a good postcard.
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This is from a 'Code of Conduct' leaflet for bus drivers and conducters. This would undoubtedly explain the professionalism and cheery disposition of today's bus drivers.
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What was it that I was saying about the 1970s? Hmm...
3 comments:
I love these discoveries: quite magical. They make my imagination run riot.
'No News from Crackington' would make a great title for something. Perhaps your forthcoming bestselling book of objects found in books?
I've got the Boring Postcards book - it's totally and utterly fab and that was a charity shop find, (I blogged about it back in March).
Those strange messages are eerily appropriate to the book I'm reading at the moment - The Spy Game by Georgina Harding.
These finds are fascinating - keep them coming.
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