Postcards From The Edge

Be glad you're not here.

[postcards-from-the-edge]

Any time, any place, anywhere...

Hey guys, remember those old Martini ads, where swingin’ jet-setters luxuriated on yachts on the Cote D’Azur’, kicked back after a glamorous day on the alpine slopes, or landed their private helicopters in some equally exotic location before emerging in full evening dress to dance until dawn in between quaffing said eponymous libation? Yeah, so todays postcards are the very antithesis of that. In fact they contain scenes so pedestrian and so irredeemably glum that one can’t help but wonder what was going on in the minds of whoever thought they’d be a money-spinner. I mean who do you hate enough to want to send them something like this? Unless of course they’re an aficionado of abysmal postcards too.

I know you’re wondering. The caption on the reverse reads, “Mrs Newton, Presiding Member of the Canadian Mothers Union leaving St John’s Church, Halifax”. I’m presuming Mrs Newton’s the one in the gargantuan fur lapels since she’s the only one looking at the camera with anything approaching a smile. Don’t they look like they’re having a super time? And speaking of super times, my fellow Brits can certainly show the Canadian Mothers Union a thing or two. 

Doesn’t that look fun? One can only imagine the soundtrack. 

But now it’s time for lunch; packed of course.

Published by Middlesex East County Girl Guides, just in case you couldn’t tell by the natty uniforms.  And now gird your loins for the full horror of the postcard on my masthead.

Published by the Northamptonshire Federation of Women’s Institutes. I particularly love the use of parentheses around the word “clowns” and the miserable interloper hiding behind the one with the blue hair and the red ruff. 

I think it can be safely assumed that the only people who could possibly have bought these cards are the women who appeared in them. As for who they sent them to, remember those TV and radio quizzes in the pre-internet dark ages, where they’d say, “answers on a postcard please?” All four of them ended up in the offices of Future Publishing in Bath in 1991, where my friend Steve was working at the time. Though they could have been languishing forlornly in sideboards for decades before finally fulfilling their destiny.

Laters!

[postcards-from-the-edge]

Toys in the Attic

If there’s one thing scarier than vintage postcards featuring small demonic children, it’s the postcards deemed suitable for those children way back when. Nowadays, of course, they send them cute shit like this...

... which I think you’ll agree is a far cry from a family of clearly traumatised bunnies attempting to wash a car they’re too large to fit into with a hairbrush almost as big as the car.

I know; of course I know. Kids armed with their trusty imaginations, do in fact play with their toys like this. In fact I myself recall fashioning a very serviceable “church” out of two polystyrene tiles and some Bostik so that my Barbie and Ken could get married before having their wicked way with each other. Given that the Bostik fumes probably resulted in my ending up in a similar state to the bunnies, I’m amazed I even remember that. But while we’re still on the subject of rabbits...

I put it to you, dear reader, that it wasn’t a child who art directed any of these postcards. Which kind of makes you wonder what drugs the adults were on. 

I’m erring on the side of hallucinogens.

As usual I’ve saved the best for last. 

You will never un-see these rag dolls.

Missing you already!

[postcards-from-the-edge]

Lawful wedded WTF

You may well ask.

I’m thinking Italy, (the veritable motherlode of naff mid-20th Century European postcards), some time in the early 70s, (aka The Decade That Style Forgot).

As you can see no expense was spared on this shoot. They had a white background...

...and a red one!

Plus a panoply of tasteful floral arrangements and the bloke who appeared on the front of every Barbara Cartland novel ever!

Am I right or am I riiiiight?

Plus some of the gowns and headgear look as if they might have been similarly inspired.

It was Agnetha’s afternoon off, so they had to use Frida that day.

Buona Pasqua, my fellow romantics!

[postcards-from-the-edge]

Damian: the early years.

Let me tell you a story, bad postcard enthusiasts. And let me preface it with the admission that I am not a Baby Person. Which is to say I’m way more likely to lose my shit over a kitten or a puppy than I am a small human, unless one of my friends has given birth to it, in which case I’ll find it fascinating, buy it toys and cute clothes, and read it bedtime stories as soon as it gets old enough to understand them. But babies in general, not so much. Especially if they’re screaming.

And, lo, it came to pass I was in a branch of Waitrose with my cousin, (which is to say my dad’s cousin, who I think of more as my aunt in the absence of an actual aunt), and a baby started squalling. And I mean big time – so much so that several other, hitherto perfectly chill babies, started one by one to yell in sympathy, until the entire store was pandemonium. It was at this point that I saw my cousin waving her arms frantically at me from the front of the store and went to join her. 

I was expecting her to ask me to fetch her some item she’d forgotten to stick in the trolley while she waited in line, but I was mistaken. “I knew all that screaming would be driving you mad so I thought you might like to wait for me here while I go through the checkout. At least you’ll be behind that baby”. 

Let me say at this point that my cousin is not only a Baby Person but an indiscriminate one at that.

“You know,” she said, “I think there might be Something Wrong with it.”

“Really? What kind of wrong?”

“Well, just listen to it,” she whispered, “It sounds almost... metallic.”

It certainly didn’t sound quite right. Leaving her to it, I sat down in front of the checkout area. The woman with the baby was waiting in the aisle next to my cousin’s. A lady in another queue leaned over and tried to stem the racket with a cheery smile – only for it to freeze on her face the instant she clocked whatever was in that pram. She recoiled like a piece of twanged elastic and stared fixedly down at her feet. I will never know, but this can’t be far off it.

Don’t say, “Aaaw”, that baby is demonic and you know it.

Those frills are fooling no one. Even its toy is possessed.

And this is just the beginning. Mark my words things will only escalate as they get older.

Tell me that kid isn’t biding his time till he can eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice glass of Chianti.

Ohhhh, he’s plotting your demise alright.

The things that poor dog has seen.

You know some flowers are poisonous, right?

(As an aside I feel I should tell you I’m pretty sure I had that exact dress as a child).

Laters, gators.

[postcards-from-the-edge]

When food looks like the effect it would have on your stomach if you ate it

I know what you’re thinking. That postcard’s not so bad. Those fish look more or less edible, if a bit past their sell-by date. In fact it could be said it has a kind of retro charm. As indeed it has. That’s because I’m leading you into this gently.

I’ve always had a soft spot for these French recipe postcards, most of which were procured for me by my oldest friend when au pairing for a family called Desbleds, (aka the Bleeders), back in the early 80s.

In addition to some frankly random styling, unappetising ingredients and occasional incorporation of ladies in national costume, comme ça...

(Yeah, I have no idea what that superimposed contraption hovering over the plate on the left is either)

... the backs look like this:-

... which renders them kinda redundant as postcards. 

Perhaps they were the recipe equivalent of chain letters, intended to induce a similar feeling of dread?

Yep. Dread fully engaged courtesy of Annabelle there lurching out of the milk jug.

But there’s worse to come.

Much, much worse.

I considered putting it under a cut for the faint of heart. But where would be the fun in that?

Buckle up for the main course, the veritable pride of this post, playmates...

You may well ask. 

I did. One of my fellow art students was bilingual, having been brought up, as coincidence would have it, in Clermont-Ferrand, where the Bleeders resided. 

It’s a stuffed goose’s stomach. With raisins. Because of course it is.

Au  revoir, mes enfants!