MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 36

I was thinking today about postcards. As you do. A few decades ago, everyone sent postcards when they were away, depicting golden beaches, blue skies and children splashing in the sea – even though they were probably writing the card on the beach, huddled by a windbreak in a Force 10 gale. Nowadays, the only cards I receive are the occasional ones from neighbours whose house we are keeping a watchful eye on. Oh yes, and my teddy bear gets them sometimes from his best teddy friend, but that’s another story….!

In the 1950s, through to the 1970s, you could hardly move along the prom or the pier without bumping into large revolving racks of postcards, mainly saucy ones from the likes of artists such as Donald McGill.  They were brightly coloured and politically incorrect, featuring enormous ladies clad in bathing suits, skinny red-nosed morose-looking men or maybe busty young women revealing their undies. At one time they were popular, but then became thought of as ‘common’ and so most people turned to (boring) view cards instead. When I was holidaying on the Isle of Wight last year, I discovered a Donald McGill Museum in Ryde, which was filled with his postcards and memorabilia. The cards were even glued to the ceiling. If you’re visiting the Island and are a McGill fan, it’s well worth a visit.

It also has a super little cafe, which is Alice in Wonderland themed. The museum and cafe are small, but, as they say, 'perfectly formed' and I just can't wait to go back.

In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, before the Second World War, postcard-sending was a national pastime. You could post a card in the morning to say that you’d call in at teatime, and amazingly the card would have arrived and the kettle would be on. Often, people sent postcards as greetings cards rather than the folded cards we know today. These greetings’ postcards would bear luridly coloured pictures of flowers or animals, or, on those intended for children, the child’s age together with a design of a doll, toy, animal, flower, cottage, pond – often the whole lot all on one card. In those days, design didn’t seem to matter quite so much.

Many of the cards were hand coloured, and the colourists seemed to go in for the brightest shades they could find. It's fun comparing two cards with the same design, and seeing how the colours vary. Sometimes the choice of colour can alter the whole appearance of the post card.

There were many kinds of novelty cards too – cards made from celluloid, or decorated with fur or feathers. Some bore pictures of dolls or animals with googly eyes that moved when the card was shaken, while others looked quite plain until you held them up to the light, when a beautiful picture could be seen.  There were cards made up of lots of pictures of toddlers superimposed in scenarios such as driving cars or playing instruments in a band, while other cards featured montages of women’s faces; often these faces spelt out a name or a town. The 1930s saw cards by artists such as Mabel Lucie Attwell. Mabel drew pictures of chubby toddlers and smiling children, with various cute captions.  She produced hundreds of different designs, and many other artists copied her style, some more successfully than others.

During the First World War, soldiers serving in France sent back beautiful postcards that were embroidered on silk. These cards were sewn by French women, in between their chores, and some were very skilfully done. Other ladies weren’t quite so proficient with their needle, and so their cards were less neat, but still colourful. Many of these cards are poignant, they bear tender messages for their wives and children, and you can’t help wondering whether that soldier managed to return home safely from the conflict. Other cards are sentimental, printed with the words of romantic songs or with pictures of soldiers in the trenches and an image of a woman representing the wife or sweetheart back home.

I’ve built up quite a large collection of cards over the years, and so has my daughter. I started her collecting when she was in her early teens, giving her a couple of beautiful albums specially made for postcards. It’s a good collecting field for youngsters as cards, even quite old ones, can be picked up cheaply at flea markets, antique centres and fairs. The messages on the cards are often interesting, too – sometimes they are very gossipy. Some people used to write the message upside down, the idea being that then the postman couldn’t read it. I would have thought that the any postman worth his salt would just have turned the card upside down to read it, should he be interested!

At last the promised milder weather is appearing, albeit it slowly. Yesterday it was warm enough to sit in the garden for a while watching the birds, as well as small, cheeky wood mouse. The mouse was gathering up some dropped birdseed from around the bird table and taking it to its nest under the fence.  The weather is meant to be even warmer next week, so at last the bower is beckoning. I shall be able to sit there and relax, dream and think. Maybe I could write postcards to my friends, reading. ‘Wish you were here’!