“I’m going to see my aunt” was a phrase mostly used by women from around 1850 onwards – meaning to go to the toilet.
This entry can’t bring itself to talk other than entirely in euphemisms though, so instead of WC we get the wonderful “closet of decency” and “house of office”.
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
On this page, I Also love “My Lord” – a nickname given to a hunchback. And “My nabs” – the phrase “his nibs” still exists but the version referring to yourself is now very obscure.
But “My aunt”, though. What does it mean? Is it this…….?
[If you haven’t seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, this is Not Safe For Work]
Smoking in "Keep Fit", Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, 1935
Looking at The Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, it feels like it would be remiss not to have a look at what it says about smoking. After all, it seems like smoking was the Universal Hobby back in the ’30s.
The chapter on “Keeping Fit” is largely in accordance with current thinking apart from pretty high expectations exercise-wise. I daresay there’s a couple of people out there these days not getting the recommended daily amount – “An hour’s hard singles [tennis] is considered by physiologists to represent the minimum amount of daily exercise for the average man.”
But when it comes to smoking, they’re not quite so strict. Smoking “may do no great harm”, although it’s better to “knock off” the fags if you’re an athlete.
Smoking in “Keep Fit”, Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, 1935
Meanwhile, in The Weekend Book, they’re positively in love with tobacco. It’s a cure-all, the joys of which are detailed in a little poem that was very much removed in later editions of the book:
The Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, 1935
Today’s fun is an indoor game for those who own a number of lemons and, trickier, multiple walking sticks. Having tried this myself, I can only concur with the statement “Until you have tried to poke a lemon along in this fashion, you have no idea how unruly a thing it may be.”
The Universal Book of Hobbies and Handicrafts, 1935
“Jogging the Lemon – This is an amusing race game, for which a fairly large room is needed with a clear floor. Any number can take part. Each competitor holds a walking stick, and with the point of this he must jog a lemon up the room and back again. No hitting is allowed. Until you have tried to poke a lemon along in this fashion, you have no idea how unruly a thing it may be.”
The Pelham Pop Annual of 1970 was strangely weight-obsessed. So much so, that there’d be serious Twitter outrage if this kind of thing was printed now.
It’s even the headline on a Cilla Black interview:
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Every pop profile contains the exact weight of the stars. If you want to know how heavy Dusty Springfield, The Tremeloes, The Marmalade and Fleetwood Mac were, you’ve come to the right place:
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Mick Fleetwood is apparently 6’6 and 10 stone 4. I guess he liked being skinny too, that’s a BMI of 16.6!
My favourite bits are the “Likes” and “Dislikes” sections. The Tremeloes’ Alan Blakely’s “Small noses” and “Large noses”, especially.
“Titbits Book of Wrinkles” from 1938 is another one of my favourite type of book – the compendium of knowledge. “Wrinkles” in this book mean “tips” or, as in the (slightly annoying) word of the moment, “hacks”.
Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
This is an oddity from the “Medicine” section – a recommendation to take the “Blue Pill”.
Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938
This inspired a bit of history-surfing. I found out that this blue pill was also called “blue mass” and was quite popular as a cure-all in the nineteenth century.
I have a small Sailor’s Bible, issued during World War Two.
The Sailor’s Bible, 1941
But the reason I bought it was because of the hidden treasure I found inside – anything extra found inside an old book being a joy only slightly ahead of finding the previous owner’s name and date on the flyleaf.
But it feels like these should be with someone else, heirlooms from their granddad perhaps. Maybe he had no family, maybe they didn’t know this was here, or maybe they were just pretty unsentimental about this kind of thing. My Grandma was in the unsentimental camp – she threw out the love letters sent to her by Grandad, and would sympathise with this view, I expect.
There’s an Algerian 50 centime note hidden between the pages:
Algerian 50 Centime note, 1941
And further on, a heart-wrenching love poem from the Sailor’s wife, Annie, talking about the wasted years of separation:
Poem inside The Sailor’s Bible, 1941
I have such a sensation of a microcosm of time here – a bible with, possibly, emergency money hidden inside and a poem to remind him of home and raise morale. I wonder if the position of the money, on the page telling the story of the scapegoat, was significant at all.
So Joey Essex claims to have invented the word “reem”, does he? Well in the 1865 Slang Dictionary here, we have “ream”.
Spelt slightly differently, but meaning “good or genuine” which is pretty much what I imagine TOWIE mean by it. And there’s also “ream bloak” meaning “good man”.
It comes from “rum”, in the days when “rum” meant “good”, before it meant “bad” or “suspect”. Confusing this slang business, sometimes.
From the Pelham Pop Annual, 1970 – a fairly difficult Beatles quiz.
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
The Pelham Pop Annual aimed to only feature artists that would stand the test of time and, looking at their features, they mostly did well. Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, The Who are all here. Unfortunately, the annual only seemed to last for the one, 1970, edition though.
Here’s another guest post, this time from Steve. He hasn’t got a blog or a website, despite the fact that he is well aware that he should have, considering he is a web developer and also hosts this site. And wrote this introduction.
A website for old and rare oddities you say? Well enough about me, here’s my guest post. Back in January 1978 a magazine debuted at my local newsagents, it was called STARBURST, and having recently seen the movie Star Wars (some of you may have heard of it) I persuaded my Dad to buy it for me.
This magazine has a LOT to answer for…
Not sure what happened to Han’s face, but the rest of the artwork is great!
Somehow I have managed to keep it. Sure the pages are yellowed and there are a few tears, but it has a mystical nostalgia to it. There are only a few articles – split between Star Wars and Star Trek (the 60’s TV series only of course) and I can’t say that I’ve ever actually read them in the past 36 years now that I think about it. I mainly looked at the pictures – a trait that’s remained with me I might add – and while the glossy colour shots of Star Wars captured the breathless excitement of the landmark motion picture in my young and impressionable five-year-old mind; it was the fascinating advertisements in the magazine that I pored over. The promise of re-watching Star Wars again in the comfort of my own home was almost irresistible; remember this was barely the dawn of the home video revolution, JVC and SONY had only just released portable VCRs, and terms like VHS and Betamax were Sci-Fi words. Movies were more of an event back then, as you saw them once in the cinema, and if you liked the film and wanted to see it again, you had to wait about five years, and then end up with an edited version on TV interrupted every half hour with commercials. But look at this – they actually sold Star Wars on film so you could see it at home. You had to buy a projector too mind, which they claimed were sold at “down to earth prices.” No amount of tantrums persuaded my dad to buy them of course. But look at some of the formats; 200′ spools of “highlights” – black and white – no sound – 8 minutes long – Hang on – This sounds amazing! I want to see these chopped edits of the original more than I want to see Episode VII – but look at the price of them. Historically adjusted inflation makes that £165 YELCO Sound Projector a whopping £827.36. And that special 400′ spool is now £165.22. So to see 20 minutes of Star Wars at home in 1978 would set you back £992.58; which is about £49.63 per minute! Compare that to the actual cinema price in 1978 – average of 93p for a ticket at the time, adjusted to £4.66 now – to watch the whole 121 minute movie. A snip at less then 4p a minute. Well, that actually made waiting until October 24th 1982 to see it on TV seem perfectly sensible. But the other adverts in that first issue of STARBURST also captured my imagination; a shady comics dealer, a fantasy bookstore, and how amazing was this; an incredible melting man! Was it a film or a TV show? There was no googling back then either in 1978.
This is very shady. It scared me as a child.
Odd name for a book store… Art by the legendary Brian Bolland.
The more he melts the stronger he gets! I watched this film barely 34 years later
This very magazine was my gateway drug into many things; aged six I was reading hard SF such as Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, comics like 2000AD, and with a growing appetite for watching really bad horror movies. Just think; if my dad had not bought that 50p magazine – I might have turned out normal.
