Category: Retro Stuff

The Ulti­mate Bubble

I’ve been tired and busy lately. Here’s a great bubble gum advert from the 80s with a Kraft­werk-meets-Eurythmics soundtrack, and some odds and ends of inter­est­ing links.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 27- Solitude Stand­ing digit­al version

In 2016 I left London to house sit in the small town where my grand­par­ents had lived. After a sequence of unfor­tu­nate events involving elec­tri­cians and train strikes I ended up spend­ing the whole summer pretty much alone in a town full of old people, where I knew no-one and there was very little to do, and I had very little in-person contact with other people. A situ­ation a lot of other people can relate to at the moment I think.

Tim and the Hidden People

Tim and the Hidden People is a series of children’s school read­ing books from the late 70s/​early 80s that a lot of schools had. They have a strange, bleak folk-horror atmo­sphere, and the illus­tra­tions in the first three collec­tions are a little uncanny valley. Tim is always walk­ing along lonely canal paths with strict instruc­tions to not look over his shoulder and tie the silver string around a partic­u­lar tree or else.

Altern­at­ive London 1969/​70

I found this book in a char­ity shop. It’s a prac­tic­al guide to altern­at­ive living in London from 1969/​70 cover­ing a wide range of topics from rent laws, to sexu­al­ity, drugs and communes to join. This is the first edition, there were yearly updates through­out the 70s.

Bognor Char­ity Shop Finds

Here’s the best stuff I got for very cheap in the excel­lent char­ity shops in Bognor Regis (the only enter­tain­ment there). The reas­ons for so many good finds is fairly grim- lots of old people in the area who die and have house clear­ances of all the 60s and 70s stuff they were hanging on to. Everything cost less than £5.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 27

I’ve done a new zine about that time in 2006 I acci­dent­ally spent a whole summer alone in Bognor Regis. For £2.50 you get both the zine and the mini zine I made at the time for the 24 hour zine chal­lenge. Find them here.

60s slides: Costi­era Amalf­itana

Here’s some more 60s tour­ism slides from my grand­par­ents’ house (you can see others here). This time from the Amalfi Coast in south­ern Italy, now a UNESCO site. Again I have posted all 36 images. It looked pretty much the same when I was there about 10 years ago, minus the annoy­ing coach party of loud Texans who kept appear­ing every­where you looked and complain­ing there was no Taco Bell and you had to walk places. Further along the coast in Sorrento I bought a very fancy waffle-knit towel that still serves me well for trav­el­ling. The shop assist­ant seemed very confused that I wasn’t buying a whole match­ing set of them like the major­ity of their custom­ers. Afraid I could only afford one small one. 

60s slides of Hercu­laneum

When clear­ing out my grand­par­ents’ house a couple of years ago I found seven pack­ets of these 60s tour­ist slides of vari­ous places around the Medi­ter­ranean. I’ve been scan­ning and restor­ing them. First up, these from Hercu­laneum.

Hercu­laneum is a smal­ler coastal town near Pompeii that was also destroyed by the volcano. It’s not as well known, but there are some magni­fi­cent villas there in a simil­ar but smal­ler archae­olo­gic­al park to the one you can visit at Pompeii.

Cadbury’s Novelty Cook­book

I got this late 70s/​early 80s book from a char­ity shop a while ago. A lot of famil­ies in the UK had it when I was a kid I think. I got it out because I prom­ised to make my friend a really ludicrous birth­day cake from inside. The recipes are fine, vari­ous flavoured sponge cakes with butter­cream icing (albeit with gratu­it­ous Cadbury’s product place­ment in every recipe). It’s the choice of cake themes in the book that’s a bit odd …

Char­ity shop finds

I haven’t found as many good char­ity shop items lately as over the summer, but there’s been the odd few things. I got this vase for £2, which I’ve planted an aloe vera in, for my own plant version of Sideshow Bob.

Recent char­ity shop finds

The good thing about spend­ing the summer in a small town full of old people is that there are a lot of char­ity shops and jumble sales, they often have good stock, don’t over­price and there aren’t a lot of other people look­ing for the same things as me (which is more likely to happen in a big city).

Toy Camer­as in Brighton

My flickr account has 370 albums on it, dating back to 2007, before I star­ted this blog. A little while ago I dug out some pictures of Brack­nell from the archives, and I thought I’d find some more things from the oldest albums.

Fabric stash

I have a lot of fabric. Mostly remnants from char­ity shops or from my nan’s stash (she was a dress­maker /​ tail­or). I haven’t done any sewing this year, because I lost a lot of weight in Febru­ary due to a nasty bout of gast­rit­is, and it seemed silly to make some­thing that would later be too small, or to try to guess at what my normal fitting would be. I’m back to my normal weight now though, so I can go ahead.

DDR Museum

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I’m fascin­ated by the history of the Cold War. Both the polit­ic­al side, and the social history of people’s every­day lives. I’ve always been extra fascin­ated by the former DDR, both because I can speak the language and because they tried so hard to be a “model” Iron Curtain soci­ety. You read about people being “intern­al emigrés”. Being a good comrade and work­er on the surface, but intern­ally escap­ing to their own world via drink or just plain daydream­ing. I suppose that’s what I’d do in the situ­ation. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I’m currently writ­ing a zine about the trip this summer, so I’ll save them for there.

Starkes Vier­tel- photos of Dresden Neustadt in the 70s and 80s

When I was in Dresden, I bought a photo­graphy book by a local photo­graph­er. Günter Starke lived in Dresden Neustadt, the area just across the river from the histor­ic­al centre, in the 70s and 80s, and took a lot of photos. Despite the name, Neustadt is full of old build­ings that escaped bomb­ing during the war (it’s only new compared to the baroque city centre), and in the commun­ist days, the local coun­cil concen­trated on build­ing blocks of flats and hous­ing estates to house famil­ies.

Golden Hands Book of Crafts

While I was at my grandparent’s place, I scanned some books. Here’s the Golden Hands Book of Crafts from the 70s. I have some of the magazine of the same name, which I scanned before. You can see that here. Most of the tutori­als in the book weren’t very excit­ing, but there were some nice 70s stock pictures.

Listen­ing to my grandad’s stereo (but not his record collec­tion)

I recently received my grandad’s stereo. He’s 89 and has moved into an old people’s home, and said he didn’t need it any more. He was an elec­tric­al engin­eer for Philips, so his choice of appli­ances can usually be relied on. I was expect­ing some­thing from the 70s, but then it turned out he’d actu­ally bought this one 3-4 years ago. I don’t know why he felt the need to buy a whole new stereo to listen to his 10 Shir­ley Bassey records. He once gave me a tape with Itali­an lessons on one side, and Shir­ley Bassey songs on the other. I guess he felt it was about time I took up both of those things.

70s interi­or design book

Here are some scans from a 1970s interi­or design book- House by Terrence Conran. Some of the stuff in it is really really 70s look­ing, and some is very clean and time­less-look­ing. The pictures I’ve scanned are a mix of the two categor­ies. I just scanned the pictures that appealed to me, as it’s a massive book. Some of them are a little grainy due to the print­ing tech­nique. I scanned anoth­er 70s interi­or book I have here.

Golden Hands Monthly

got this stack of 70s craft magazines in a junk shop in Devizes a few years ago. That place was amaz­ing, a multi-floored cavern of junk. It’s gone now, I think. Here’s some photos.There’s the usual ultra-cheesy raffia work projects and crocheted plant hold­ers and so on, but the clothes patterns are actu­ally mostly pretty nice, which is why I bought the magazines. What I’ve scanned is a mix of nice things and weird stuff though. I also couldn’t scan double page spreads very easily, because the bind­ing on the magazines is dodgy, and I didn’t want to pull them about too much in case they broke. These issues are from 1972 and 1973. I have anoth­er issue from 1976, but it’s prin­ted on much cheap­er paper (the paper qual­ity wasn’t ster­ling to begin with) and the contents are pretty dull.

Aban­doned school science lab

I was doing some resid­en­tial teach­ing for the last 2 weeks. A group of year 9s from Chile came on a school trip, and I gave them lessons about English and Brit­ish History/​Culture and took them to vari­ous histor­ic­al places like Cambridge and Canter­bury. I was work­ing in the middle of nowhere, in this old manor house in the middle of a nation­al park. The house had been a board­ing school from the 1920s to 2005, and the company I worked for was only using part of the build­ing.  We were the last school tour to be there before it was going to be handed over to the new owners, who no-one knew much about, but didn’t seem to be using it as a school. There were lots of locked up rooms that had been used by the board­ing school, but weren’t used for the language holi­days, like the science lab, and they had piles of school stuff lying every­where. The atti­tude was pretty much feel free to explore, just make sure the kids don’t get into anywhere that could be danger­ous.

Museum of 51

I went to see the Museum of 51 exhib­i­tion at the Royal Fest­iv­al Hall a while back, which is about the Fest­iv­al of Britain. Basic­ally it was a fest­iv­al in 1951 to celeb­rate 100 years since the Great Exhib­i­tion and cheer people up in grey, rationed post-war London. As well as films, shows, fairs and so on, there were shows of hous­ing and interi­ors, to show people what they could look forward to after rebuild­ing and the end of ration­ing (everything avail­able for sale in WWII was simple and util­it­ari­an and rationed). My dad went to pretty much all the events, seeing as they were mostly around the corner from him in Batter­sea.

Explor­ing the World of Robots

I’ve had this book since forever. It was part of a set of educa­tion­al books that were a hand me down from my cous­in. The others in the set were pretty stand­ard, on topics like anim­al migra­tion or cars, but this one is a bit odd. The others in the set have long gone to the char­ity shop or anoth­er relat­ive, but I’ll always keep this book.

All the cheese­cloth & macrame you can eat

I got this 70stastic book for £1 from a char­ity shop, mainly because of the pictures. The textu­al parts are worthy and Blue Peter-ish, with lots of making things out of tea chests and copy­dex (why doesn’t tea tend to come in chests these days?), guides to home tie-dying, and sentences like “and kitchen foil gives a touch of glam­our”.

Don’t Put Out

The other week I was in Brighton to see Ladies and Gentle­men the Fabulous Stains, a forgot­ten film from the 80s about a fiction­al all-girl punk band with Diane Lane, Ray Winstone (yes, really), Paul Simonon and half of the Sex Pistols. They’ve star­ted doing a cinema club at the West Hill Hall show­ing cult films with bands play­ing after­wards. This time the bands were Trash Kit and Woolf. I found out about it when I was at the copi­ers and the guy in front of me was copy­ing flyers and we got chat­ting and swapped zines and flyers. I wish that kind of thing happened to me more often. A good even­ing filled with friends and good feel­ings. Bands and film recom­men­ded. I want to be back in Brighton. ( I decided to go not via London to see if the cheap­er tick­et was worth the both­er- it wasn’t, it took me 4 hours and between 4-7 trains each way)

Sewing

I’ve got a box full of unfin­ished sewing projects and a huge fabric stash, and as I’m unem­ployed at the moment, I decided to get them all finished/​used. Here’s the first thing I finished, a dress made from a 1960s pattern

Char­ity Shop­ping with Tukru

On Sat I went down Rochester with Tukru to do some char­ity shop­ping. She got Ike & Tina Turn­er and Human League records, a unicorn colour­ing book for zine purposes (she’s a big unicorn fan) and I convinced her to get some Agatha Christie books.