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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Seaside Postcard 98, 99: The countdown

ramsgate seaside postcard
Not very elegant, not very old, but a reasonably harmless one from the 1950s or maybe the 1960s. Bamforth cards rarely avoided innuendo or double entendres and here's a fine example!

ramsgate seaside postcard Slightly cuter, this card was posted in October 1914, so the war was already a terrible reality... (you can see what was happening on this day in 1914 at the excellent FirstWorldWar.com).

Curiously this was either bought some years earlier, or simply old stock from the shop as the pull out pictures include the Italian Gardens, which had become the West Cliff Hall about 8 years earlier. Other pictures include the London steam boat, the Sands railway terminus and the New Pavilion.

Sent to Willie Price in Clapham by Wal and Nan, who saved a halfpenny on the postage by writing nothing except their names (and destination address) on the back.

And moving day tomorrow - final frantic packing and general chaos all round today. Hurrah.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Seaside Postcards 96, 97: Happy Days

ramsgate seaside postcard
This 1926 card brought a smile to my face - I expect there'd be a health and safety riot if you even tried this nowadays, if you could even find a spring board to queue up on, but it's tempting to give it a try, purely in the cause of scietific research. Something about mass, motion and irresistable forces, I think...

ramsgate seaside postcard This rather more elegant drawing shows a dastardly cad (you can tell, it's the fact that he's smoking whilst gallantly carrying his lady off the sands so her dainty shoes avoid getting dirty - I suspect he has other things in mind though... she doesn't seem to be too worried).

Sent in 1908 (looking back, 1908 was a fantastically busy year for postcards...).

Oh well, enough diversions, back to packing boxes - removal van due in only 50 hours. Eeek.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Edukashonal Standerds . . .

library


A stroll in to town today took us past the library for the first time for a few weeks. Nice to see the scaffolding down, it's looking like a complete building at last. A bit of tidying up still to be done, but not long now before the return of a cultural and educational resource...

And not a moment too soon if these estate agent signs are anything to go by. The client, the printer and the sign putter-upper - surely one of them turned up to their English lessons on the day they talked about apostrophes? Sigh.

library