"And Your Point Is..?"

I'm writing this in the relative safety of our loft, while downstairs, our new kittens are tearing the house apart. Losing their testes hasn't made any discernible difference to their urge to destroy, so I'm not quite sure what to do. Perhaps a giant wheel is the answer.

There's no theme to this post. It's just a hotchpotch of things I've noticed during the last few days.

First, another candidate for my gallery of bad art, courtesy of the Lewes branch of Pizza Express:

I remember creating doodles like this in the Paint programme of Windows 3.1, if I was feeling particularly bored.

It must have taken all of five minutes to do the curved lines, then click and fill the gaps with different colours.

It's a pity, as the Pizza Express itself is lovely. They deserve better than this:

Next, a rather uncomfortable choice of bookmarks for a title about African tribes:

UK readers will recognise the Golly branding from Robinson's marmalade. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't ditched until 2002. According to Wikipiedia, the "brand director" at Robinson's insisted that:

"We are retiring Golly because we found families with kids no longer necessarily knew about him. We are not bowing to political correctness, but like with any great brand we have to move with the times."

On the subject of moving with the times, I've noticed that in the 1960s, it was the Panther imprint that took the lead in spicing up innocuous novels with saucy covers:

When the once-popular Howard Spring's sales started to dip, someone in Pather's sister company, Fontana, decided that a little more sauce needed to be added. This cover, for a novel that was originally published in 1934, promised more than it delivered:

Next, a wonderful advert from a novel published in the 1890s:

As you can see, Queen Victoria herself described the hats as "extremely becoming", which is is almost indecently effusive by her standards.

(*NB - I have now been informed that this endorsement would have been from 'The Queen' magazine. Another dream shattered.)

Sadly, Mr Heath's business didn't survive the hatless postwar years, but you still see the beaver statues that graced the top of his premises. There is also an interesting piece about Henry Heath's hats here.

Next, one of my favourite bookmarks so far: a menu from the RMS Ascania, for Friday November 27th, 1925:

The Corn on Cob au Beurre  and Ice Cream and Wafers aren't terribly exciting. Was this for the 2nd Class passengers?

I haven't been on a cruise, as I abhor any holiday in which one is forced to socialise with other tourists, particularly when the only means of escape is overboard. I don't go abroad to make friends with someone from Leatherhead.

The one time my wife and I went on a group holiday, it was a disaster. The trip turned out to be mainly composed of Daily Mail readers (I think it was a special offer in the paper) and I spent the entire week hiding from people.

I started off with good intentions. However,  an agonising group lunch, during which a woman boasted that her husband was "big in concrete" exposed the gaping void between our worlds. I was later caught hiding from everyone in a vineyard, while my wife explained that I was "shy".

The trick is to travel with a small group of like-minded people. I once shared a villa with some people who worked at the House of Commons, via a tenuous connection with someone I knew in my teens. We met at Gatwick Airport and by the time our plane had landed, we were laughing and trading good-humoured insults like old friends. Every day was a real laugh.

At the end of the holiday we swapped names and addresses and agreed to meet up in London, but naturally none of us bothered.

It can be quite comforting to let your hair down with complete strangers without the messy business of maintaining a friendship, which leads to my final bookmark: an agenda for the British Association for Behavioural Psychology's annual conference at Exeter, in 1976.

The agenda for Saturday 24th is a punishing schedule of symposiums and lectures, including the following:

• Group relaxation with agoraphobics
• Marital group therap
• Group relaxation with stammerers
• Training the compulsive gambler
• Imaginal exposure with dental phobics
• Cost effectiveness of behavioural psychology
• The aetiology and treatment of sex disorders

The list goes on, but I'm sure you'll be as pleased as I was to learn that in the evening, between 8.00 and midnight, they had a disco. The thought of a hall full of behavioural psychologists bopping away to "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" makes me wish I was there:

"Oooh-hoo, Nobody knows it. When I was down. I was your clown. Oooh-hoo..."

January's Bookmarks

This month has been a fairly poor one, as far as work is concerned. Most of my stock has come from a library clearance sale and the gems appear to have been weeded-out. However, a few curious photographs have managed to slip through the net.

This wonderful street scene is from the turn of the last century, but you'll have to click on the image to fully appreciate it. When I first saw the photo, it looked unsettlingly familiar, then I discovered that it was of Station Road, Hampton, near where I grew up.

Most of the buildings in Teddington and Hampton sprang up in the 1880s and 90s, during the huge expansion of the London suburbs. Today, the streets look remarkably unchanged, with long rows of Victorian semi-detached houses. The few 20th century buildings were generally built to fill the gaps left by the Luftwaffe.

Here's another town that has changed very little:

On the reverse of the postcard, which has a postmark dated 4PM - SP 7 - 09, I found some more information about "Mrs Wakefield":

I think I might incorporate the naughty Mrs Wakefield into my five-year-old son's bedtime story routine.

This gentleman appears to be wearing a large flower in his buttonhole. Is he off to a wedding?

I'd also like to know more about the next two photos. Is it the same man in both pictures?


At first glance, I'd say they were different men, but it's amazing what a receding hairline and a luxuriant moustache can do to add a certain gravitas. Fighting in the First World War probably added a few years too.

Assuming that the photographer is her husband (or boyfriend), this photograph is curiously touching. My mother would probably say something about "mutton dressed up as lamb", but I like that fact that the woman seems at ease with herself and is having fun.

My father used to do of cycling and youth hostelling in his 20s and was always telling me what fun it was, but there must be easier ways to get girls into bed.

Two notable worthies, these photos were found in a crumbling, leather double frame. Sadly there were no clues to their identity.

Finally, my favourite book from last week:

Ideal gift? For who? Presumably someone you dislike, as I can't think of a more depressing present.

The title doesn't help. Why can't it be "Enjoying Retirement", with the gentleman on the front happily pruning some roses or playing with a train set?

On the other hand, given the grim economic forecasts for the pensions industry, perhaps those Saga catalogues that feature white-haired people enjoying exotic cruises and exhausting multi-city intineraries, will soon be a thing of the past.

Today's Bookmarks

I was going to write a second post about a recent trip to darkest Essex, but my blogging has been curtailed by several crises during the last few days, so please treat this hastily-written post as an intermission.

The following photos were all found tucked away in books that had ended up in my office, after they'd failed to sell in charity shops. As usual, none of them had any writing on the back to indicate where or when they were taken.

The first is a very striking, hand-tinted portrait, that was found inside a copy of "Queer People" by Basil Thomson:

The next two were part of a set from Hong Kong. I particularly like the Chinese mermaid:



In the next image, look carefully and you might see a ghostly face at the window. This photo was found inside a copy of "A Girl for Sale" by Mabel Barnes-Grundy :

The next image is worth clicking to enlarge. These eight men are something of an enigma and I would love to know what their connection is. Also, what is under the tarpaulin?

I love the following photograph, with it's weird perspective and compressed depth of field. I was enthusing about the modernist influences to my wife, but she looked at me as if I was mad: "Surely it's just a picture of a car crash that someone took from a window."

I'm not convinced.

The cars in trouble theme continues here, in what looks like late-1980s London. Although the subject of the photo is some people struggling to push a broken-down car, they have been relegated to the rear distance and the focus is on the two men's amusement.

Finally, from serious to coquettish, in four easy stages:

Can you guess the year? I'd say it was 1984.

The Unconsoled

Twelve years ago I was working in Slough. My daily commute to work involved a stop-start crawl along the most congested sections of the M25 and M4, culminating in the roundabout that appears in the intro sequence to The Office. It was a dark time.

If someone had told me that one day my drive to work would take me through the South Downs to a road that hugged that coastline, I would have dismissed the idea as an impossible dream.

But every weekday, that's what I do. Within five minutes of leaving my front door, I'm driving through beautiful countryside, listening to podcasts of Radio Four programmes, before the road suddenly turns south and takes me down to the English Channel. It's the best commute I've ever had, but to my great shame, within a fortnight of beginning my new route, I took it all completely for granted. These days I barely notice the sea.

This evening, for the first time in ages, I actually noticed my surroundings and bothered to stop the car so that I could enjoy this:

Seeing this view and comparing it to my time in Slough makes me frustrated at my lack of gratitude. Why do we get used to things so easily? Why the constant feeling of dissatisfaction?

Perhaps I'm just being maudlin because it's been a bad month, full of financial worries and various life-changing decisions. It could be worse. At least I'm not working in Slough.

Maybe I need to have a drink with this man:

There. He's cheering me up right now. Just looking at that face, with its hail-fellow-well-met expression and twinkling eyes. Of course, he might have been a terrible bore. We'll never know.

The mystery gentleman was one of several photos that were found in books during the last few days. Some were rather mundane pictures of babies and animals, but the majority were fascinating.

Take this triptych, for example. There is a whole novel in these enigmatic images:



The woman looks a bit of a femme fatale - I can see a literary novel with a bit of sauce.

From one extreme to another, I also like this photo of a young nun in front of a fairly horrible, modern building:

I didn't know that nuns had handbags. I wonder what's inside it?

I've always been prepared to die for my country (illegal wars excepted), but I really couldn't stand the harsh physical training regime that accompanies military service, see it's nice to see a more "portly" gentleman playing such an important role in our coastal defences.

This isn't the most interesting wedding photo that I've posted, but what interests me is that like all of the others, it features at least two people who look pretty miserable. What's that all about?

I love these random photographs that fall out of books and now have a whole drawer full. But what I can't stand is the mystery. The best pictures give us tantalising hints and clues, but the puzzle will remain unsolved.

The Perils of Thelonious Monk

I think I can now safely conclude that at least 70% of people in the past used photos as bookmarks (with only 1.3% using actual bookmarks as bookmarks). It's bad news for the bookmark industry, but very good news for the blogosphere.

Here is a small selection of photographic bookmarks from the last two days:

Here we see a fine, upstanding British family from the early 1960s, in front of their Ford Anglia. Although they are on holiday, Father wouldn't be seen dead without his tweed suite, matching cap, brown brogues and club tie. It would also be unthinkable for David to appear in public without his uniform.

But something terrible happened to this family. They discovered modern jazz and everything changed:

The country casuals and school uniform have been replaced by polo neck sweaters, dark glasses and semi-nudity. These two innocuous photos encapsulate the huge revolution in social attitudes that took place in the 60s.

This looks like the author photo of a minor writer of Welsh short stories in the 1950s (now out of print). Perhaps it is. Somebody is on the bridge, looking down at him.

A group shot from the 1962 military manoeuvres of the Women's Institute, shortly before they decided to abandon violence. The vicar looks slightly nervous:

In addition to some enjoyable photos, these illustrations caught my attention:

"Take that, Fritz!"

In this, the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, we are quite rightly celebrating the pilots who downed Messerschmitts at a rate of four to one, but what about those plucky chaps who landed on German airfields and engaged the Luftwaffe in hand to hand combat? Their story must be told.

Finally, an example of jacket design from the golden age of crime writing:

A fine example of a striking image and catchy title. The man appears to be in some sort of distress, possibly in reaction to a big snatch. It makes you want to read the book.