British Postal Banality
This collection of utterly horrendous postcards is a delightful window into our past and what people valued in days gone by. Certainly in retrospect it is hard to grasp what on earth the people who made these postcards, and more importantly the people who bought and sent them were thinking, but at the time they all made sense to somebody.
Most of these cards are from 1960's and 1970's Britain; I recommend the companion volume "Boring Postcards USA" for a similar look at US postal proclivities in the same eras. Some of the themes of the book are over-represented (highway interchanges chief among them), but I found the postcards of motels, campgrounds, and public areas to be charming though horrifying.
Among my favorite cards in this volume are such greats as "NUL. 30F. M.6. Motorway. Newcastle-under-Lyme.", "Interior of the Mersey Tunnel, Liverpool", "The Drive In Bottle Shop, Northampton", "The Butts Shopping Center, Reading", "Farnham Post Office", "Canteen, Stoke Mandeville Hospital" (a truly ghastly realm of colors), "National Giro Centre, Bootle" (an amazingly postcard that has actually been postmarked!), "A corner of the Moota Motel, Cockermouth", "The Garreg Goch Caravan Park, Morfa Bychan" (the saddest trailer court I have ever seen), and perhaps my favorite of all, "Rain Clouds, from Southend Pier", a bad photo of some clouds in beautiful black and white.
Truly, this is a great collection that simultaneously made me amused and sentimental. I only wish that I could detach and send these postcards, as I know several people who would be delighted to get a card of "Turbine Hall, CEGB Wylfa Nuclear Power Station, Anglesey."
Boring, yes; yet strangely moving, too!!
I just love this collection of postcards - they are truly mind-numbing, and as I was leafing through the book, my over-riding thought was WHY??? Why on earth would anyone take a picture of the National Giro Centre, Bootle, Preston Bus Station, numerous Forte motorway restaurants and the Bull Ring centre? Perhaps these buildings and roads were something to be proud of when they were built - a brave new post-war Britain. I can see the point of a few of them, but some are just mind-numbingly boring and just plain odd. The oddest, in fact, is Basingstoke. Three pictures in one postcard, all showing the same view of construction work on a pedestrian precinct.
Ahhh - the pedestrian precinct!! How 60's is THAT!!!!!A great book to have around and a great conversation starter.
Entertaining, if you are open to it
I would agree with some of the previous reviewers. I love this book. I keep it on my coffee table and look at it when I'm bored. Many people would look at it and think its completely pointless. After all, these postcards are exactly the type of thing my wife keeps trying to throw away because they're "junk." I don't think they are junk. Taken together, these pictures might say something about society, history or something of that nature. I say, "who cares?" I just think they're plain funny. Pictures of shopping malls and 60's hotel lounges - all entertaining. Some of the funniest ones are of some guy's body shop on an ugly lot somewhere in wherever, but it says, "Ray's Body Shop" proudly at the top of the card. If you like visual stimulation of any kind, you'll like this book.
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