Nostalgia and shopping lists

Tags

1975 referendum, Anastasia Romanov, Brands Museum, Brownie camera, Fairy liquid, Gales honey, Guinness, Harold Macmillan, Harpic, Johnnie Walker, Juke Box Jury, Lighthouse Memorial Garden, Lockdown, Museum of Brands, Persil, Ritz biscuits, Rowntrees Fruit Gums, Six-Five Special, Stergene, Teletubbies, Tommy Steele, Zwarte Piet

Yesterday’s blog about my visit to the Museum of Brands ended at the late 1940s. There was much more to come, though I took few pictures towards the end of the Time Tunnel. Nostalgia was giving way to distaste at consumerism!

The 1950s. A symbolic grocer’s shop of the time. How I recall those endless queues, as my mother and I waited to be served, while tins were fetched, goods were weighed out and advice given. No supermarkets yet, but they were coming.

Anastasia: was the woman genuine who was claiming to be the escaped youngest daughter of Russian Tsar, so a survivor of the Romanov assassination, carried out by the Bolsheviks in 1918? Conclusively proved in 2007 that no member of the family escaped.

Ah, that ‘contemporary’ style!

More than once towards the end of the 50s my friends and I were allowed to ‘go up’ to London to be in the audience at the BBC Riverside Studios as ‘Six-Five Special’ went out live on Saturdays, at the time specified, and to ‘Juke Box Jury’. I remember being disappointed at how short Adam Faith (‘What do you want if…’) was as we crowded around afterwards to get autographs.

But Tommy Steele (‘Singing the Blues’) was my real idol. (By the time The Beatles came along I had lost interest in pop music, but meanwhile had had a bit of a pash on Cliff Richard.)

‘Don’t forget the fruit gums, Mum!’

My grandmother had the Brownie on the left, my parents the one on the right.

The 1960s.

I think I tried all of these hairstyles, bar perhaps bottom left.

My mother’s culinary salvation (sorry Mum!). Quick dried peas, Vesta instant dried meals, and Birds Instant whip. And yes, she saved Green Shield stamps.

The 1970s.

A coffee set the height of sophistication

1975. Sigh…

Yup, I had one of these, two-tone beige

1977, Silver Jubilee

1980s.

I had my own first computer, a BBC B, in 1984, and joined the internet in 1997. I was living in France by then, and learned all the jargon in French.

1990s. I didn’t take many photos from now on.

This window was the last, to represent the 2010s.

By now, I was in real need of a sit-down, while there remained much to see. So I was pleased to find myself in the cafe. My intention after refreshment was to explore the Memorial Garden, but it started to rain at that very point, so after a quick photo I immediately turned back inside.

There was one more room, with a roomlet off, yet to explore, covering a variety of themes. Immediately to my right there were three tapestries, each about two metres high, dedicated to London, Rome and Amsterdam. They were true tapestries, that is, the pattern being woven into the fabric, not applied later. Each tapestry had taken about a year to complete, and contained 100 motifs.

Nearby was an apology and indeed an apologia for displaying the exhibit, which contained a reference to ‘Zwarte Piet‘.

This next display gave interesting details on how various products had fared in the light of lockdown and the pandemic.

Some well, some less so.

So far in this room, it seemed that the exhibits had been temporary, but I think the next series of displays were probably permanent ones They showed how packaging of various products had changed over the years, sometimes centuries. I’m disappointed that the images are sometimes not sharp.

I don’t now Frijj and have never used Stergene.

Gales honey, Ritz biscuits and Sunpat peanut butter

The ‘roomlet’ was dedicated to several windows about Johnnie Walker, advertising packaging, promotion, sponsorships, which presumably also sponsors this display, and to those shopping lists which had originally drawn my attention to the Brands Museum.

I am particularly disappointed that the lighting (and perhaps my lack of savvy) has made the photos of these, at times amusing, shopping lists, gathered by one woman and then her friends since 2016. One I especially liked, but which is too blurred to show here, had clearly been written by one person to ensure that the person actually doing the shopping bought the precise things.

There were three displays this size.

List as written by a child!

Four different shops on the left. Very healthy on the right.

Very neat

The week’s meals, and ingredients

Presents and food for Christmas

This shopper knows where to get best value: Waitrose, Tesco and Aldi all to be visited. I hope they didn’t drop the list before visiting the last.

Vodka, Rum, Coke and Beer. Hmm, wonder what they’re planning…

Packing and shopping for a holiday in Norfolk.

I spent a happy evening with Mary, including a meal out with her sister, Susan, who herself did a blog on this museum in 2019.

The third and final post in this series will cover the next day’s visit to the Cézanne exhibition and the area surrounding the Tate Modern.

Two days in London – Friday

Tags

fourth plinth, Glenn Miller, Junius, London, Mail Rail, Monet, Mount Pleasant, National Museum of Iraq, Panther House, pavement entertainment, Penny Black, Postal Museum, Rowland Hill, Sainsbury Wing, Tommy Steele, Ulysses

I spent two days in London last week, and, quite apart from social time with my friend, Mary, I had three very different experiences.  The timing of my trip was determined by the fact that the ‘Monet and Architecture’ exhibition at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, was very soon coming to an end. Moreover, I was very glad that I had pre-booked my ticket as there would have been no chance of a walk-in ticket.

Pavement entertainment outside the Gallery

The ‘fourth plinth‘ in Trafalgar Square is currently occupied by ‘The Invisible Enemy should not Exist’.   It is built entirely of the packaging of Middle Eastern foodstuffs (some sources say date syrup cans) and Arabic newspapers, and is a commemoration of the artefacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq, in Baghdad, in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It represents a determination to recover the more than 7000 objects still missing.

The Sainsbury Wing, temporarily showing the 77 Monet paintings

Looking back from the entrance

No photography inside the Monet exhibition itself was allowed, but I did manage to get these pictures at its entry and exit.  I thought a better title would have been ‘Monet and Landscape’. But perhaps they’ve done that already.My other visit that day was to the Postal Museum, including a short trip on its Mail Rail, the underground post transport system, which opened in 1927 and closed in 2003.  As there was no really convenient public transport between the two places, I decided to walk, and the 35 minutes estimated by online research turned out to be very accurate. I walked fast but made stops for a few photos and to check that I was on the right route.

More pavement entertainment in Trafalgar Square

I had a crush on Tommy Steele back in the   … ties, but I’m a little young to remember Glenn Miller.

Paris? No, London.

It was a noisy walk with much traffic and many people, but once I turned off Grays Inn Road into Mount Pleasant (the road), it was totally quiet.  I have tried to find out more about the Panther Building, and it seems that it is currently workshops and studios.  Planning permission exists for the redevelopment of part of it.

Two big surprises awaited me just before I got to the Postal Museum in Phoenix Place:  the beauty of the 1929 Mount Pleasant building, and that, while much shrunken, there is still considerable Post Office activity on the site – a great deal of redevelopment is going on there also.  I had a bite of lunch in the café at the Museum, then crossed back over the road to Mail Rail, where likewise I had a timed ticket. This rather blurry picture shows the size of the ‘wagons’, ideal for postal parcels, packets and letters, but only just large enough for tourists to sit in!

 

There were four stops on the 15 minute ride, at which there were projections on to the walls about Mail Rail’s history. 

It very much resembles the London (passenger) Underground of course – but it’s on a much smaller scale.

After the ride, the exit was through a small further exhibition about it. 

‘Ulysses’ banned – by mail as well!

‘…ever needed again…’

And at the end I watched a short film which I had not had time to see beforehand, from which the above is a still.

I then crossed back over the road to the award-winning Postal Museum, which opened in 2017.  It was very well presented, with plenty to keep both adults and children interested. Here are just a few of the dozens of photos I took there.  Firstly, why do we call it ‘the post’?

“It is not the cause of faction, or of party, or of an individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain.” Yes, well. (Junius was not, by the way, a Roman philosopher, but the nom de plume of an 18th century writer.)

Rowland Hill introduced the penny black, the very first postage stamp in the world. This exhibit was not lit, perhaps for fear of fading, so a decent photo was difficult to take.  I shudder to think how many millions of pounds this exhibit is worth, though apparently it’s a plate proof so doesn’t count as real stamps.

Post boxes have not always been red.  They started – in the Channel Islands in 1852 – painted green, but people in the countryside thought that dreary, so from 1874 they were painted red. I think that splendid mail coach was the best, but here are some other forms of postal transport.I rather fancied this tunic, but my attempt to try it on reflectively was foiled by the height of its plinth. Is nostalgia the same as feeling old? I felt both as I recognised the famous ‘Press button B’ telephone booth.Near the end there was the chance to sit and watch an hour’s-worth of short PR  films made by the Post Office’s Film Unit (founded 1933). The most famous of them all, ‘Night Train’ was just about to start as I passed, so I sat and watched it.

On leaving the Museum, I took a backward look to the splendid Mount Pleasant building. Then I wandered through quiet back streets to the bustle of King’s Cross, and took a bus back to Mary’s place.  We had a very nice meal at a French restaurant in Camden Town, though I could have wished that the moules marinières I ordered for my starter had arrived instead of the spicy moules provençales!