Discover Top Posts Tagged with #naff postcards

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!

#Naff postcards #kitsch postcards #retro recipes #retro postcards #awful postcards #nightmare inducing postcards

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!

#Naff postcards #Retro postcards #kitsch postcards #wedding postcards

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.