Blimey! This Sounds Serious!

Well about as serious as a classic Bamforth postcard from the golden age of the British seaside...

Following on from Everybody's Swinging at Rhyl which I posted in the cool of October last year, this one is far more suited to the current swelteringly hot and muggy climate.

It's another mid 1960s beauty crafted by Bamforth's house artist Arnold Taylor. A couple strolling through a field with a transistor radio blaring out the lyrics "There'll Never Be Another Yeew", with two rams watching as they pass by, and one saying to the other "Blimey! This Sounds Serious!"

A play on the word 'YEEW' and 'EWE'. Both are rams - and there are no ewes in sight. The words "there will never be another yeew / ewe" thus predicts an awfully "serious" scenario for these two rams - a world without ewes. Funny in a kind of apocalytpic way. Maybe there are other interpretations though. Are the Rams just observing that the couple are seriously in love? Not quite cheeky enough to be a typical Bamfroth gag. So maybe in the spirit of the lyrics, one ram has the hots for the other ram?

Anyway...it's a great period postcard, the figures drenched in a yellow sky, which looks even more brilliant against the green grass, and the couple's bright tops.

The reverse has a message written by Chris to Mick who is "having a lovely time hear" - in Lowestoft, back in mid-September 1965.

It's so odd that old personal messages like these end up circulating in the second-hand market. A far cry from important documents finding their way to our National Archives - but somehow these kinds of ordinary, simple communications become great social history in themselves. How many young people today would write on a postcard that "the Youth Club will be open about next Tuesday"?

4.30 PM 14 SEP 1965

Bamforth COMIC Series No.2198

This Vehicle Is Attending A Funeral

Herby Burger

Boise, Idaho

23rd September 2013

Bar Mitzvah Ceremony

To mark Abe's Barmitzvah, here's an unusual trade card that was issued by Reddings Tea of London in the late 1960s. It's from a set called 'Strange Customs of the World' which also included images of Ceremonial Road-Sweeping, Samoan Tattooing, Scorpion Eating, and Giraffe-Necked Women of Burma. Compared to those 'strange' customs, yours sounds like a doddle...

Good Luck!

Years ago, it's amazing just how many companies issued free sets of cards with their products. Reddings Ltd was based on the very same road as Tottenham Hotspur Football Club so what were the chances that they supplied their tea back then to a major First Division team? They certainly broke into the Table Tennis club market - here's an advert for Reddings that was published in 'Table Tennis News' dated February 1972... 

REDDINGS TEA

wish their Team every success in the Halex Super League

Reddings supply Tea, Tea Bags and Coffee Products

to Sports and Social Clubs throughout the Country.

Club Secretaries/Treasurers boost your Funds by

buying at low Wholesale Prices for your Refreshment

Breaks.

For details and prices of Reddings Products write

to:

REDDINGS LTD.

Devonshire House, White Hart Lane, Tottenham, London N17

Telephone : 01-888 4864

Sverige Juni 1958 VM Fotball

Following on from my previous post, it actually took the Brazil football team eight more years to win the FIFA World Cup Competition after the debacle of that Final Match of the 1950 Championships on their own turf. In Sweden, in 1958, Brazil became the very first (and only) non-European nation to win the World Cup trophy in Europe - beating their hosts Sweden 5-2 in Stockholm (Solna).

For each match of the 6th FIFA World Cup tournament, the Swedes produced very attractive booklet-style programmes measuring  12.5 x 18 cms and packed with 88 pages of editorial and advertising.  And it's the latter that I want to champion fifty six years on - a selection of some wonderful pieces of graphic design which are inevitably far less well-remembered than the legendary Brazil football team of '58! 

There were 27,000 people attending this Semi Final match which saw the teenage prodigy 'Pele' score a hat-trick in a 5-2 demolition of a classy French team