MargieCM: April 2008

Cigarettes and History

Some time ago I found a real treasure at a country fete. It's a hardback book, a popular (and selective, it has to be said) social history of South Africa, published in 1938. The unusual thing about it is that the pictures have all been collected from cigarette packs, the book presumably becoming more colourful as the owner's lungs became more congested.

Here's the title page - sorry for the distortion:

As you can see if you click on it to enlarge, it was "Issued by the United Tobacco Cos. (South) Limited, manufacturers of 'C to C' cigarettes - with which the pictures are packed". Smoking may be bad for your lungs, but in 1938 it was pretty good for your education.

This is a page from inside:

I'm wondering if the fact that some of the pictures have been pasted in a little crookedly means a child was doing the collecting, egging his or her poor father on to a nicotine consumption of several packets a day in order to complete the set - which, incidentally, he or she did, with a few extras to spare. Here are a few "doubles" which we found tucked inside the front cover:

And this is what they look like on the back:

In times where instant gratification is the norm, it's nice to imagine someone slowly building up this collection and perhaps swapping doubles at school to fill in the blanks. Over how many months I wonder? Imagine the satisfaction of pasting in that very last card. You don't get that downloading from Wikipedia.

Whoever this collector was, whatever political and social climate gave birth to the idea, and whatever meandering path this carefully nurtured book followed on its journey to the little town in country Victoria where I found it, I feel quite privileged to be its custodian now.

Bad writing habits

Haven't blogged for a while; the brain is so full of domestic and pedestrian clutter. All very important, but as they say, I can get all that at home, and so can you.

Looking for ideas for topics, I scanned through some of my older posts. All I found was the sad fact that I have some really bad, lazy and cheesey writing habits. I thought I would purge myself by listing some of them:

When working at these blogging larks,
Too many exclamation marks!
And brackets (or parentheses)
Appear too often for my ease.
Then to pause or make effects,
The dash or hyphen - it comes next.
Hanging thoughts are plain to see
When dot dot dot is used by me ...
Semi-colons to explain
What I've just said; but once again.
Italics used to emphasise
Are patronising and unwise.
As is bold type, often used
In case the reader gets confused.
The cliche bullet is my friend:
A cheap effect to bring

The end.

(PS: At least of one there is no trace -
I've never used a smiley face!)

Banjo and Fiddle

I'm still feeling sadly inadequate not having a dog of my own to share around these parts, so I've borrowed a couple for you. Madeleine just sent me these pics of James' Jack Russells. The phone camera strikes again!

Banjo at the keyboard. Naturally.