Imperial War Rooms

Two postcards from the Imperial War Museum which consists of five locations, three in London.  The most recent of the five is the Churchill War Rooms, opened in London in 1984.

Both of the postcards are reprints of  "public service announcement" posters of the day.  I can understand about eating carrots for your eyes, but it's not clear to me what "Save Bread and you save lives" and "Serve Potatoes and you serve the country" mean. 

Any thoughts?










P.S.  It's Postcard Friendship Friday.  You know what to do.

Postcard Received on Saturday

Only one postcard received yesterday, from my friend Susan. It must have been purchased at the Linley House in Kensington, which is open to the public as a period museum. The postcard is an illustration by Edward Linley Sambourne, who lived in the house and who was chief cartoonist for Punch from 1901 until his death in 1910.

It's interesting to note that this illustration is from 1908; the suffrage movement began in the United Kingdom in 1865. By the early 1900s, the movement felt it needed to take more extreme action. I believe that is what "agitation" on each ski is referring to. Remember the mother in "Mary Poppins"? I love the chorus in the song she leads, "Sister Suffragette".

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"

Voting rights for women in the UK weren't completely established until 1928.

P.S. Women were granted the right to vote in the US in 1920.

A Beheading Block from Tower of London

Okay, two London postcards in a row maybe isn't cool. But they are posted for very different rea
sons. (In the spirit of full disclosure, it's what I scanned into the laptop before leaving for vacation.)

This postcard makes me think of three things:

1) Sending postcards back to the office when on vacation. This is one of the things I miss about working in an office. I've found a lot of postcards to various companies from a variety of colleagues in my collection. At one time, colleagues were a primary source for collecting.

2) My friend (at the time colleague) that sent this is a copywriter/food writer, and we've always competed with each other in the pun area (mostly so we could engage in insane cackling). Both her insane cackling and bad puns made the card.

3) Dana Carvey's "Church Lady". For a time, "....I don't know. Who made me do it? Could it be SATAN?" was part of the popular vernacular. It's funny how phrases like this are ubiquitous for a time, then just seem to disappear in thin air.

Home Away From Home, For A Time

For a couple of years, I traveled a lot, often to London. I must have stayed in the Langham Hilton 20 or more times.

My favorite thing about this hotel is the staircase. It is very wide with a beautiful red carpet. The stairs themselves have a very low rise. You could run down them really fast, or glide down them, pretending to be British royalty. An old, elegant hotel like this evokes these kinds of actions, a least for me.

London

I've been to London twenty or thirty times, almost always for business. I was there so often, it became difficult to find a postcard I hadn't already sent home. Here's one that shows a variety of classic London images.

The message reminded me that I was there on election day. It was fascinating. Everybody votes, but it's fast - you vote for the party. Then everybody goes to all night parties to wait for the election results. The next day, the results are in, and the new guy (in this case Tony Blair) moves in to 10 Downing Street. It's so FAST. I had to wonder how they had time to put up new towels and change the sheets.