Postcards from the edge

"A person without a sense of humour is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road." 

(Henry Ward Beecher)

Due to medical treatment, work and IT problems (never anything by halves, the GigiOnSea motto), I've really fallen behind with posts on this little blog! I seem to have several posts in the pipeline but none of them have made their way out into the sporadic sunlight; a bit like most of my bright ideas, hopes and wishes. Pleasant diversions are so often a downfall; but there's always much to be gained from a smile which costs nothing. Various friends have sent me "seaside" saucy-postcard humour over the past few weeks and I thought I would feature some of them as a personal encouragement to British summertime.
British publishers were first granted Royal Mail permission to manufacture picture postcards in 1894. The earliest cards featured famous landmarks and picturesque views or photographs and drawings of celebrities of the times. However, as travel by steam locomotives proved increasingly popular and affordable, British seaside destinations generated their own souvenir industry; the "Wish You Were Here" picture postcard became a staple product. 

In the 1930s, saucy postcards were at the peak of their popularity, selling around 16 million a year. The cartoons traditionally relied on innuendo and double entendres; stereotypical characters such as vicars, nudists, hen-pecked husbands and larger ladies featured heavily (no pun intended). I've inherited my love of what I'd call "Carry On" humour from my Dad. It's probably why I'm so taken by Brighton's own Max Miller. Yes, a lot of the humour centres around the human body, it's functions and frailties and our related sensitivities; but it's a naughtiness rather than obscenity. There's a simplicity and infectiousness in laughter that is ever-ready. I think naivete in humour, as in affection and even in faith, can be a delightful and humbling quality.

In the 1950s, the Conservative government of the day was concerned with an apparent deterioration of British morals: it decided to crackdown on saucy postcards.... A decade later, in the more liberal and seemingly swinging 1960s, the cartoon postcard was revived and even gained a new reputation as an art form. A further demise has occurred in more recent years as the artistry itself and certainly the humour has deteriorated. There's certainly a finely drawn line between bawdy and obvious bad taste; seaside humour was intended to nudge all, not wound some to tickle a few. Many original saucy postcards are now collected as works of art or kitsch, but they also document social and economic history as well as fluctuating values.
High on the Conservatives' moral hitlist in the 1950s was London artist Donald McGill, known as the King of the Saucy Postcard. He was educated in Blackheath in south London, close to my convent school. He married the daughter of the owner of the local music hall in Greenwich and spent most of his life in Blackheath; a Blue Plaque now commemorates his previous home there in Bennett Park. He was originally a naval draughtsman, whose hand-drawn greetings cards for his family gained wider acclaim. 

In 1954, then in his late seventies, McGill was targeted by the censors and tried under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. He was found guilty and fined; it devastated the burgeoning saucy postcard industry. Many cards were destroyed and several companies were bankrupted. When he was in his eighties, McGill would give evidence before the House Select Committee which was set up to amend the 1857 Act.
One of his designs, featuring a bookish young man and the caption: "Do you like Kipling?" still holds the world record for marketed postcard designs, selling over 6 million. He produced tens of thousands of designs; many are now auctioned as works of beauty and historical commentary. Yet Donald McGill earned no royalties from his work; when he died in 1962, his estate was valued at just £735. He's buried in an unmarked grave in Streatham Park Cemetery, south London.
There's a wonderful quote about humour from American psychologist and writer William James, brother of novelist Henry James. He likens the sense of humour to common sense in dancing mode. I think this really applies to the earthiness of saucy postcards. Personally, I've never bought the idea of God as a detached, sombre old man. Creation itself is filed with God's humour: He constantly does the impossible in unexpected ways and with the unlikeliest people. He created sex as a natural urge for pleasure and procreation; sex may well make fools of many, but I'd rather it was a source of mirth, not misery.

"Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing."

(William James)

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour."

(William Ralph Inge)

"She Moves In Her Own Way" The Kooks (Brighton's finest seaside skifflers!)

Fifty two names for the white stuff

"The Eskimos had fifty two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many in the English language for love."

(Margaret Atwood)

Photos: Gigi, album

On my fourth day of this miserable and charmingly named Winter Vomiting Bug, I woke to find my little street and back garden glowing with a covering of plump and pristine icing. Insidiously beautiful. I trudged to the local Sainsburys only to find that the fresh milk, among other family staples, had already sold out; hopefully not due to needless bulk-buying by Range Rover drivers. Bad enough news if you're a pedestrian, real tea and proper porridge lover like me; more seriously, a pretty and glistening coating of the white stuff isn't so delightful for the elderly, the ill and the isolated. I know from the experience of a couple of white winters in Brighton that our sensual landscape in the curve of The Downs can very quickly become a treacherous slalom for buses and delivery vans and lorries.
Like many others, I've found myself saying that I wouldn't mind snow around Christmas, but wouldn't particularly welcome the inconvenience of it once the festive season is past. Sadly, I think this also applies to goodwill and open displays of kindness. We drop Christmas cards through letter-boxes in late December, but may not think to call through those same doors a few weeks later when the paths have frozen over and the credit-card bill arrives in the coldest light of January.

I thought I would put some bits out for my feathered friends, but the garden was eerily empty of the usual birdsong; the snow has it's own resonance of white noise. The overgrown kid in me couldn't resist fashioning a snow person: but the even more overgrown spluttering and coughing specimen that I am at the moment could only manage a small but jauntily formed character on my storage bench by the kitchen door. Made up and be-hatted (the snow person, not me), I couldn't decide it's gender initially; not that rare in Brighton. On reflection in the twilight, he looks a little like local comic legend Max Miller. Which is nice. The "Cheeky Chappie" was laid to rest and is commemorated at the Downs Crematorium, just down the highroad from my street. He was very much the dapper southern English comedian, preferring to be booked into theatres in London or the south, so he could return home to Brighton after a show. I can empathise with that, although I'm not sure how long Mini-Max will last on my bench before, like Mae West's Snow White, he shifts a bit.
To anyone necessarily on the move in the white stuff, go safely; for anyone stuck indoors because of it, keep warm. And please do remember your neighbours: at any given time, they are simply those within your reach, wherever and whoever.

"Now there's a funny thing!" Mini-Max

"Black are my steps on silver sod,

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad; 

And tree and house, and hill and lake, 

Are frosted like a wedding-cake." 

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

"There is really no such thing as bad weather, just different kinds of good weather."

(John Ruskin)

"Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'."

(Bing Crosby) 

"The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,

The joyless winter day: 

Let others fear, to me more dear 

Than all the pride of May." 

(Robert Burns)

"We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt." 

(Walter Scott) 

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted..."

(Mae West)

"Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable."

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Do not complain about the snow on your neighbour's roof when your own doorstep is unclean."

(Confucius)

"Winter Wonderland"  Macy Gray

"It's all clever stuff I'm giving you..."

It seems all Brightonians are born with a Max Miller-ish take on humour: look for it and you'll find it everywhere; don't look for it and it'll probably trip you up. Since I moved here, I've learnt that Max kept two notebooks for jokes: a white one for clean ones and a blue one for "adult" ones. Coming back on a train from London last night, I encountered a "junior" Maxie.
I am already missing my chocolate, I admit. I'm being very careful and am turning away the tiniest choc-chip in a cookie. So I found myself fascinated by a small girl on the train who had peeled a large, family sized bar of caramel chocolate and was just munching down it, as though it was a banana. No breaking it into the separate sections, and certainly no sharing it with her slightly older brother. She was about six and she eyeballed me intently as she sat munching. I used to peel back large bars of chocolate and bite into them in exactly the same way when I was younger. Alright, until Ash Wednesday last week to be precise. She suddenly thrust the half demolished bar at me and said "You!" Her Mum laughed and said Clara NEVER shares her chocolate and must want me to have it. I explained that I couldn't, eventually telling the mum that it was because it was Lent. I'd no idea the little boy was listening, but he suddenly piped up "It's not lent - she won't want your bit back after you've had it!"  Just to emphasise his cleverness, he finished off with "Boom boom!"
No, I didn't eat any. Yes, lovely  Clara did manage to smudge some on my face anyway.

Martha Gunn, Max Miller and Mother Riccarda...

When I first moved to Brighton, my mother was upset by the reported comments of one Reverend Archie Coates, an Evangelical priest from London. He dubbed Brighton " the most Godless city in Britain", citing the problems of unemployment and homelessness, vagrancy and substance abuse. Personally, I've found the city to be far from Godless; it seems to me to be a place of faith, hope and charity. In fact, a record number of new Catholics have been received into the Arundel & Brighton Roman Catholic Diocese over recent years. In 2009, the diocese saw an increase of over 50% in the number of men and women received into the Catholic church. I obviously disagree with Reverend Coates; I think that financial difficulty and social hardship can make people revaluate what's really important.

My mother was more encouraged by news coverage in the summer of 2010, concerning a nun from Brighton who was being fast tracked to sainthood. Mother Riccarda Beauchamp Hambrough was born in the town in 1887. Her parents converted to the Catholic faith when she was four, and she was then baptised in the Roman Catholic church of St Mary Magdalen in Upper North Street. As a young girl, she attended mass and prayed there and her vocation was inspired. At the age of 24, she travelled to Rome to join a convent.

Mother Riccarda eventually joined a revived order of Bridgettine sisters in Rome, nicknamed “the hot cross bun nuns” because of the distinctive crosses covering the tops of their wimples. During World War II, this unassuming nun made her mark as a bold and committed woman. In 1943, the Nazis took control of Rome and began transporting their tragic human cargo out to Auschwitz. Mother Riccarda and the Abess of the order, the now Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hasselblad, smuggled scores of Italian Jews, Communists and Poles into their convent at Casa di Santa Brigida and hid them there. Many jews later testified to Mother Riccarda's particular kindness: she was known to them simply as "Mama".

Mother Riccarda became head of her order and later died in her beloved Rome in 1966. Her cause for sainthood was opened in July 2010 by the Diocese of Rome. Significantly, her file was quickly referred to the Holy See's Congregation of Causes for Sainthood. Last month, it was reported that the Pope is considering the case for Mother Riccarda to be declared "Venerable". The quest will then begin for two miracles in order to declare her "Blessed". The conclusive step will be sainthood. Her progress is being followed avidly at St Mary Magdalen's; Catholic Brightonians already feel she is the "local saint".

In a typically quirky Brighton move, the city's bus company has now named a bus after Mother Riccarda: a number 7 to be exact, travelling from Seven Dials to the railway station and on to Brighton Marina. Since 1999, every new bus entering the Brighton and Hove fleet has been named after a person notable for their significant contribution or strong connection to the area. It's undeniably charming and quite a talking point. Most of the names have an obvious relevance: the Prince Regent, Maria Fitzherbert, Martha Gunn, Thomas Paine, Kitty O'Shea. Max Miller, of course, has an open-top sightseeing bus named after him. Other choices seem to have more tenuous links: Chopin, really? There was even a bus inexplicably named after Santa Claus; sadly now out of service.

Apparently, the very nice Father Blake from St Mary Magdalen's has been asked to bless Mother Riccarda's number 7; he'll probably end up blessing the entire fleet, which can only be a good thing. The Catholic church is watching for signs of acts of Divine Intervention to speed Mother Riccarda to sainthood. I've seen many strange and wonderful things on the number 7 route since I moved here; not sure I would use the term "divine"...