No Smartphones. No texting. Just POSTCARDS in the 1970s. Yay!

[UmBongo]

 

Hoots mon!

 

Weather has been guid and Jessie has a lovely tan.

 

Angus got his kilt wet when he fell in the Forth the other day.

 

Will see you on Saturday.

 

Regards,

 

McTavish.

[Pillock]

The bridge looks approximately the right colour but last time I was there it didn't have pure screenwash flowing beneath it.

[forddeliveryboy]

Watching old sitcoms like 'Open all hours' and 'Last of the summer wine' made in the late '70's or early '80's everyday things did often look very shabby/rusty/broken and dirty...

Even newish cars looked grotty. It was just how it was I suppose! I was there, but have no memory of stuff being so bad.

 

Of course it wasn't! Watch other sitcoms and you see something closer to the truth. Just that kids didn't have their heads buried in computer games but were out playing in the bright sunshine - of which there was significantly more, because of less aircraft - and most old people still had enough common sense (as well as a massive sense of fun) to make childish foolery appear strange in those adults who had a diminished sense of what matters to children. In contrast today and of course generalising massively, people seem jaded, cynical and ambivalent. What really matters in life is often realised all too late in life, from what I see. I reckon most on here are lucky in that respect - we have a grounding.

 

Three or four TV channels and infinitely better quality viewing. It also used to close down late at night and the test card was shown until about 6 am. Now there are hundreds of channels and there's almost nothing worth watching. It is a crying shame that television, a media which could be put to so much good educating the masses and diffusing culture, is now almost solely used for banal 'entertainment' purposes, 'reality' shows (where nothing could be further from reality) and dreadful imports of US 'comedy' - an oxymoron if ever there was one.

 

There is still quality TV to be had, but it seems to me to be the exception rather than the rule.

 

Gave up on having telly reception a couple of years ago, just use an iplayer recorder to watch what's worthwhile. Anything elsewhere which is superb is always stuck online pretty fast, too. I found it took too long to find the good 'broadcasts'.

 

 

 

Hoots mon!

 

Weather has been guid and Jessie has a lovely tan.

 

Angus got his kilt wet when he fell in the Forth the other day.

 

Will see you on Saturday.

 

Regards,

 

McTavish.

 

Flippineck, I'd forgotten how old the FRB is. Must have been seriously inspiring to little engineers in the making back in 1890. What an all-time great piece of engineering.

[Karmann Ghiaman]

At a guess:

 

HALT = Having/Had A Lovely Time?

WYWT = Wish(ed) You Were There?

 

Yes, that must be right, thanks Norbert!

 

The obligatory Beetle makes its appearance in this compelling, almost Biblical scene:

 

 

Posted in Bournemouth-Poole on 22 July 1973...

 

Dear Kevin,

We had a good jouney down to Swanage, and the cottage we are staying in is small but very nice, it is in the country, on a farm. there is a lovely view from the window as you can see the sea. see you on Monday.

 Love Debbie  x

 

Can't say fairer than that on a ppc, I reckon he's in there -and she never bought a house in Dunstable.

 

Another castle with its lonely miniskirted temptress, but this time she hath a canine guardian:

 

 

Printed in Ireland. Not sent.

 

Royal Parade, Plymouth:

 

 

Wed [6 September 1972]

 

Dear Miss Lully

Card as promised we had a good trip down arriving at 6.30. weather so far fine and warm hope it last. Shall be back in Brighton at 9pm Monday. Regards V & G

 

It's all organised like a German military operation, down to ze ferry last minute!

 

Here is The "Feathers" Hotel, Ludlow:

 

 

Friday [8 June 1974, postage has gone up 1p to what we used to call thruppence-ha'penny. Purple stamp]

 

Here for a few hours on the way to Shrewsbury by bus. Ludlow is quite delightful & we are cycling back here tomorrow & staying for a couple of nights at the Blue Boar. Having dinner at the Feathers tonight as it is steak pudding which Daddy fancies! Weather very unreliable. Enjoying ourselves

 Love

     Mum

 

Who needs windsurfing in the Maldives? Steak pudding at the Feathers in Ludlow in 1974 seems a much more attractive idea. Excellent picture, patiently waiting for the shite to come out and go with the Tudor building, everything a postcard should be.

 

Now it's 1975 and Second Class mail has risen by a further 2p, but the cunning Post Office conceals rampant inflation by making the Five-and-a-half-Pee stamp purple too!

 

 

Enjoying a lovely holiday and the weather is glorious. The Farm House is right in the fields and we can hear a waterfall from our bedroom. Regards to your Mother & Father.

 Love CE & J.A

[Karmann Ghiaman]

This one was posted from Pwllheli on 20 July 1975...

 

 

It is MAIN BEACH, ABERSOCH, but the text belies its sun-drenched Mediterranean appearance:

 

Dear Dorothy.

 

 We are not having much luck with our holiday weather but are still enjoying it all the same. We have got a lovely site up in the hills with a bay on either side; it is ideal for Sam although he doesn't quite know what to make of the sheep!? We have been swimming and sailing a few times. see you. Love from Sue.

 

(We charitably assume that Sam is the dog rather than her mentally-retarded brother.)

 

From the same person, two years later, almost to the day, 22 July 1977:

 

 

Dear Dorothy,

 How are you and your family after your hols? We are enjoying our holiday down here and staying in a lovely caravan about 12 miles out of Bournemouth. We haven't had much sun yet so have been touring around hoping it will pick up soon. We have been into Bournemouth a couple of times, visited Southampton town and docks, and had a walk in the New Forest. Dad and Ian are in their element looking at all the beats,

 Love to you and Ant. from Sue xx

 

The good old days when children were kept firmly OUT of pubs. You can see them licking their little cheese & oniony fingers there. Anybody explain 'the beats'? That is exactly what it says, she had very neat handwriting and it's perfectly legible. Does she mean 'Beat [Nick Chick]s'? Someone from an earlier generation might just have referred to a few Punkettes on the beach as such. Or is it 'Beat[en-up old cars]', as in Autoshite?

 

Grim little castle time:

 

 

STRAND GATE, WINCHELSEA

 

Dear Alma,

Thanks so much for your letters and all the news. What a busy person you are these days!! I hope you're not doing too much. I've just got over a nasty bout of flu, but otherwise all is still going very well here. Our new Rector takes over after Easter - maybe he will shake us all up.

 Much love to you from Joan

 

P.S. I will write more next time - I've a bit of a family worry at the moment.

 

Looks like she lived there in East Sussex and this wasn't a holiday card, just using a postcard by way of polite brief reply to more than one newsy letter. We are left on tenterhooks by the P.S... Personally I'd get the new Rector to shake that wretched family worry up: 'Vicar, have you met my brother Sam? He's ever so keen to meet you...'

 

 

Traffic island, scuffed grass, roadsign, carpark. Brilliant. Where the good citizens of York once massacred the Jewish population in the 12th Century. Nowadays they could express their racism by more sophisticated methods such as simply voting UKIP.

 

Same place:

 

 

The 1100 strikes again. You'd think an Archbishop could have a better car than that. A Roller or at least a Daimler.

 

And Airviews gives us this fine er, air view with Clifford's Tower and its carpark bang in the middle:

 

 

A perfect illustration of how settlements begin at the confluence of two rivers, though York is notoriously floody and I have myself been trapped by rising water there back in the day (lived in York 1979 - 87). None of these three were ever sent.

 

Are you listening at the back there?

 

[hennabm]

I was in Pwhheli in 1975 at Butlitz. IIRC the weather was very changable from cold and wet to the occasional sunshine.

 

It was the last holiday I ever took with my parents - can you blame me!

[drum]

Keep 'em coming KG. Is it wrong I like 40 year old messages by total strangers?

Your narrative makes the thread.

[AlabamaShrimp]

(don't know how to quote just one picture) I was sat on a bench on that grass at the side of York Minster having a lovely muffin not 3 weeks ago! Sadly no 1100 in sight...

[DSdriver]

I love old postcards, they were always reproduced from black and white photos that were then hand coloured with photographic die in a studio. Usually the artist couldn't be bothered to mix up more than half a dozen colours which is why you get cars the same colour as ladies sweaters etc.

[Ratdat]

From the same person, two years later, almost to the day, 22 July 1977:

 

 

Dear Dorothy,

 How are you and your family after your hols? We are enjoying our holiday down here and staying in a lovely caravan about 12 miles out of Bournemouth. We haven't had much sun yet so have been touring around hoping it will pick up soon. We have been into Bournemouth a couple of times, visited Southampton town and docks, and had a walk in the New Forest. Dad and Ian are in their element looking at all the beats,

 Love to you and Ant. from Sue xx

 

The good old days when children were kept firmly OUT of pubs. You can see them licking their little cheese & oniony fingers there. Anybody explain 'the beats'? That is exactly what it says, she had very neat handwriting and it's perfectly legible. Does she mean 'Beat [Nick Chick]s'? Someone from an earlier generation might just have referred to a few Punkettes on the beach as such. Or is it 'Beat[en-up old cars]', as in Autoshite?

 

 

Ah, the Cat & Fiddle. I consumed ale in that establishment a few time. It's changed remarkably little in the last 37 years...

 

[Junkman]

I demand MOAR!

[Sudsprint]

These postcards are great.

 

I am happily working my way through my boxed set of' The Protectors'.

 

I guess in 1971 inserting stock footage of a Pam Am 747 screamed jet set glamour to an audience who thought a Canon Icebreaker gas fire was cutting edge technology.

 

Somehow that postcard world of a market square with a solitary pale blue Triumph 1300 contrasting with Nyree Dawn Porter's cleavage in a Jensen Interceptor now all makes sense.

[Karmann Ghiaman]

Nice to see The Cat & Fiddle unspoilt (though the children are now all guzzling their Happy Meals inside (and probably fat too)).

 

This place has been 'in the News' recently:

 

 

Note interesting shite parked amongst the stalls. Strange, was it the stallholders unloading early one morning before moving their vehicles? The house on the left was bombed (by a mortar) in the English Civil War. Some of my postcards have been purchased at those very stalls!

 

This looks very pre-Health & Safety, dangerous, scary and fun:

 

 

Speedwell Cavern - Castleton, Derbyshire. It's 'an eighteenth-century lead mine level' and I've a good mind to go and see if you can still do that, though somehow doubt it. Probably an interactive video experience by now.   If the water doesn't get you, the lead will.

 

Back down in Oxfordshire:

 

 

1100 again and a nice Maxi. Church and Almshouses, Burford. Interestingly it was posted in Windermere on 8 October 1974:

 

We do hope you are feeling better. I had an accident to my hand just before going on holiday & find writing difficult. A reminder of a lovely day spent in this quaint town

 HTM

 

It was sent to Leeds 8 and has REMEMBER to use the POST CODE! brutally stamped all over it. Addresses used to be Ld. Byron - Venice, but now you are expected to put something like Mr & Mrs Imrie-Nargs, Flat 276, Farage Tower, Vichy-le-Pen Estate, Walford Stenders, London EC15 XPA. No wonder snail mail's unpopular. And it takes days to get there 'cos they already got your money, so why bother to provide the service?

 

Excellent sensitive placement of roadsign and yellow lines:

 

 

Smallest House, Conwy. From Bangor, 14 April 1976:

 

Wed.

 

Dear Dorothy.

 Well I have got to Wales, came Sat. At present sitting in cafe drinking coffee in Llandudno. Going to Conway to dinner on the next bus and coming home tomorrow. Very windy and cold so indoors is the best place. Not much room for anymore news. Send you another one from the Dales. Hope this is okay for your collection. love Jane & Paul

 

It's more than OK for our collection, thank you!

 

Bought in West Cornwall - obviously - but posted in Ilkley,  West Yorks:

 

 

Tuesday.

We have been down at Newquay a week now We are staying in a lovely hotel and have had some hot, sunny beach days where Mike has spent most of his time surfing. we found Jane & Mick down here so have been out with them which has been nice. Mike has been hang-gliding today, quite an exciting sport. Have you been anywhere nice? Love from Mike & Sue.

 

...though one feels that a somewhat lonely Sue wrote all the cards while Mike was risking his life nearby. What next? Firewalking? 

 

[chaseracer]

'Beats' = boats...?

[martc]

"Speedwell Cavern - Castleton, Derbyshire...Probably an interactive video experience by now...This looks very pre-Health & Safety, dangerous, scary and fun..."

 

 

Was there last year - exactly as per the picture, no video interaction just very low ceilings and electric boats and lots of fun. And probably still lots of lead. The other caverns in the area are also worth visiting Blue John x 2 and "The Devils Arse" - were you are expressly forbiden from wearing hard hats.

[Karmann Ghiaman]

'Beats' = boats...?

 

Yes, that solves that mystery: you're right, a 'g' from the line above has gone through the 'o' and made it look like an 'e'.

 

C'mon children, we're off to Speedwell to go through the Devil's Arse.'

 

'Aw, not AGAIN Dad.'

 

The fleshpots of Northumberland Place, Bath:

 

 

Wed. [13 August 1975]

 

Having a nice holiday here the weather is very hot have been out quite a bit,

 Love Floss.

 

The one below cost an eye-watering NINE PEE (1st Class?) to post from Wales to Hampshire:

 

 

Thurs 3pm

 

Just sitting here, had a picnic by Llandrindod Wells Lake. Sunshine at times, its really lovely The scenery is super, not many people about have done 700 miles so far. Dad watched the football last night on our coloured TV. Sally has been ever so good. will be home Sat. afternoon. Hope everything is alright. 

 Love from us all

       Mum

 

Good that it's the TV that's described as 'coloured', rather than a bus conductor, hospital receptionist or Trevor MacDonald.

 

 

Hello Dotty Pigs,

 

So far it's a good day today - I haven't banged my head on the ceiling! Sid's Gobs allrate, but Beer was a bit flat (hee, hee) Saw Lymeswold cheese for over £3 a pound, and a small jar of mayonnaise for 96p. - but not everything's so reasonable.

 Give my regards to Charlie 

 Love - Rod & Jeanette

 

Since this was sent from Exeter to Nottingham, they are certainly being ironic about high Southern prices. (My 83-year old mother would have bought the 96p mayonnaise, as she seems to be automatically attracted to anything priced at any number ending in any digit other than 5, 0 or 9).

 

Lymeswold will require explanation for those born after 1980 (both of you): it was the first attempt in about 393 years to initiate a new British cheese. A huge fuss was made and it received much media attention, being enjoyed and endorsed by that popular member of the Royal Family Prince Andrew on one memorable (to me anyway) occasion. I thought it quite nice and ate it a few times. It was a sort of 'medium' white and a bit tangy.To cut a long dairy product story short, however, Lymeswold FAILED, was discontinued and can now only be found in dark corners of the world's cheese museums. Personally I think it was the similarity between the words 'wold' and 'mould' that was the kiss of death, but that's just my opinion - and the marketing people never asked my 14-year old self at the time.

 

Ancient card with good scooter:

 

 

Back to Wales:

 

 

We are still here at Llandullass [Yes, that's exactly what it says], but are movin [?] tomorrow maybe to Anglesey hope Joyce gets our card we thought it was 9, Park crescent - if not, someone else has it. we are feeling better for the change and rest, but would prefer better weather.

 love Mum & Dad

 

Posted in Colwyn Bay on 19 June 1980 by which time Mrs Thatcher was in power and starting to dismantle Postcardland and replace it with the Kingdom of Selfselfself... 

[Guest Breadvan72]

Lymsewold was the SDP of cheeses.   Bland, middle of the road, ultimately pointless and unsuccessful.

 

 

 

Note for the youngsters - the SDP was a centre left breakaway party from the Labour Party (then struggling with infiltration by the hard left).  It had brief electoral success, and was then absorbed by the Liberal Party into what became the Lib Dems.

[mouseflakes]

Posted in Bridgwater, 20 June 1971:

 

Dear All.

 

Had a good trip down We stopped at Stone Henge. The weather has brightened up it was very hot today so we have both gone red. The radiator has burst on the car so up to now we have only been to Cheddar. We have bought a house in Dunstable.

 

Jenny & Tony

This is great. Pre-housing bubble/BTL/HPI/LiarLoan/OMGFINANCIALMELTDOWN, the fact you'd just bought a house was less news-worthy than sunburn and a borked radiator in the Hillman.

[Junkman]

Good that it's the TV that's described as 'coloured', rather than a bus conductor, hospital receptionist or Trevor MacDonald.

 

And probably factually correct, too. Being the 70s, it likely was a B&W telly with a bright orange casing.

[Guest Breadvan72]

Sounds a bit racialist, if you ask me.  

 

 

(That was the word back then.)

[Karmann Ghiaman]

Well, racialist cheese or not, now that it's the '80s and there's a Thatcher as Prime Minister:

 

 

Saturday [30 June 1980]. thought it better to write as soon as possible. We had rain on the way down but it was fine when we arrived at Lyme Regis and it has been lovely and sunny all day. we are at Seaton at the moment 

 Love Cliff

                Joyce xxx

 

Isn't this where those monks manufacture Absinthe or Heroin or something very bad for you?

 

 

Wednesday 15th [July 1981]

Dear Alma & Roy

Taking 3 days off!

Staying in Buckfastleigh came on the off chance - we've found a v. pleasant B & B. Beautiful day all the way down. 160m Louise & Gordon are at Dentington [?] - eating with them tonight - Many thanks for your support on Friday. Tombola made £16! hope to clear well over 100 even 130. VBL Joyce & Frank

 

And the following summer, 24 June 1982:

 

 

Dear Dolly & Ant,

                            We are enjoying ourselves inspite of the weather which seems to have been better than yours. This is a lovely place to spend a holiday. lovely walks, and very nice beech huts one of which we are in at  the moment. love. Mummy & Daddy

 

No doubt the humble 'beech' hut is now in some grasping Estate Agent's window priced in many thousands of Ks. O tempora, o mores!

 

Subliminally erotic Cannon on the Cobb, Lyme Regis:

 

 

Monday [11 July 1983]

 

spending the day at Weymouth and the weather is really warm. Rod and Jeanette have gone to Sidmouth, Dolly's favourite place. The cottage opposite has changed hands again the two ladies have left. Hope you are both well. Love Cliff & Joyce [again]

 

And another from that very Dolly & Ant, though they didn't go on holiday till the autumn that year [posted in Exeter District, 5 September 1983]:

 

 

Dear All,

              Weather has been v. good today. As you can see from the post card we haven't been to Stonehenge. I thought I'd send you the card you so you can save it for my collection!!!

                                                                                 love Dolly & Ant  xx

 

...and for those weird blokes with their unimaginable Internet in a few decades' time. Stonehenge has now been given the English Heritage treatment and I think that road has been moved, though we had a school trip there in the '70s and I remenber cheerfully running round all over it and writing our names on with felt-tip, etc.

 

 

[AlabamaShrimp]

Is there no more

[brickwall]

 

And the following summer, 24 June 1982:

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much classier back then.

[Rusty Pelican]

I could spend days reading the old post cards in this thread .

THANKS for taking the time to post this for us.

SUPERB