Real England

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpt5aStiOJY

cheeky micro-rave

"This...is a micro-kick-in-the-balls"

but it wouldn't be micro, really

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/12/christmas-dinner-fatbergs-raise-flood-risk-say-water-companies

boy i really wish i hadn't clicked on that link while eating lunch

Young Conservatives on floats as part of Easter Monday parades in Weston-super-Mare

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.4500498.1461052782!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.3532323.1396947072!/image/607779214.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/607779214.jpg

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.4056825.1430469776!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.4056826.1430469779!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

the THIS-TO-THIS tableaux is not very easy to decode -- is it abt giving up alcohol?

The past isn't real

DRINK IS BEST

Is it trying for a Hogarth type Gin Lane/Beer Street tableau?

While I hold to the view that nothing older than c.20 years can be Real England, according to my own arbitrary bullshit definition of same, they are great photos.

the THIS-TO-THIS tableaux is not very easy to decode -- is it abt giving up alcohol?

― mark s, Monday, December 12, 2016 2:03 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, I think it is less about giving up alcohol per se, than giving up being working class: alcohol being hugely important in the constitution of working class identity, for the Weston Young Conservatives.

it shows the evolution of british music from chas & dave to mumford & sons

xpost I think that's right, unfortunately the tableau makes it clear that the booze-soaked before is a whole lot more fun than the straw-boatered after: in the "to this!" side they all look bored out of their wits.

Is there a date for this? I'm assuming 65/66 kind of season from the fashions (esp general lack of hairiness) but maybe Weston Young Conservatives weren't necessarily right up to date with the beardyward swing of sixties style?

ok but there are other, less parseable signifiers here: the drink-is-not-best house also features NO MEN (and NO SKELETONS)

hmm. it could be channelling old religious temperance to drink i.e. no drink also equals virtue (no men, women=virtue) also equals eternal life/no death.

tho that requires some serious garbling to end up with that float. v difficult to say.

I've half a feeling the cub scout is supposed to be on the TO THIS side as an exemplar of all things nice and middle class but he's hanging out on the fun side because why wouldn't you? Hard to explain the complete absence of boys in the TO THIS side.

idea of baden-powell cub scout *depraved* by drink is making me laugh.

what's clear: it's more fun even just to play at being a member of the degraded classes, even for WSM Tories, than it is sit in you front room wearing cricket jumper and a straw boater.

DRINK IS BEST.

They've got a piano there and everything.

that's a just william-esque schoolboy rather than a cub surely?

there was still the odd Temperance bar in the UK at this point - the classic 19th century BOOZE = POVERTY arguments were probably still getting made

I mean those arguments have a sediment of truth to them but died out in popular culture at some point in the 60s/70s I guess, thank god nowadays we have Budweiser and Helen Mirren to warn us of the dangers of Pillockry.

looking closer, i think there's actually another scout hiding behind the highest-sat girl (dark hair, pale skirt) in the ETERNAL LIFE/NO DEATH/NO LAMPSHADES house

(both the cub scouts are hunkering down somewhat; the just-william-esque schoolboy is not one of the two scouts)

ps i think this could well be early 70s, tho 60s seems more likely

obviously male hair as a whole got longer in the 70s, but schoolboys were still often under stricter manners, esp.the male children of WSM tory respectablity?

Despite this the Movement experienced a steady decline throughout the century, with members eventually having to sell its assets in an attempt to keep it afloat. For example, in 1981 the New North Road Temperance Hall was put up for sale. However, in an interview with Norman Riley (President of the Huddersfield and District Temperance Union) in 1981, he stated how he knew that the movements membership “had dwindled to a handful”, and it was impossible to compete with brewers with millions to spend on advertising.He added that “drinking alcohol is now socially acceptable and nobody cares, the Temperance Movement began when conditions were appalling because of drink. Perhaps it will have to get like that again”.

from an article on Huddersfield Uni's website. it hung on a little longer than I thought. can easily imagine Oxbridge colleges of the 60s still having Temperance Societies.

http://www.staffordshirearts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Temperance-Society-Event-Staffordshire.jpg

i rather like these grim purse-lipped ladies

(from staffordshire)

failing to spot the first cub scout. is it the lad at the piano with the girl on his knee? at first glance i think i just assumed that gary numan had teleported in from the cover of i, assassin

yes, that's him: me i disconnect from dob dob dob

"From THIS to THIS" is 1965: http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/news/picture_past_april_23_1965_1_4056836 (This was action not words" was the year after by the looks.

(The "Picture Past" section of the Weston Mercury site is absolute gold, as it turns out, but I don't suggest you spend as much time there as I just have (and am about to) Thanks Soref!).

"Heaven and Hell", which was the offering from the Cheddar Young Conservatives, beat "From This to This" FWIW (and I note the absence of male angels in that one).

Wind, rain, hail and sleet blew away hopes of a bumper Easter weekend for Weston. There were no clashes between mods and rockers, and a boat trip to Ilfracombe was cancelled on account of the weather.

would kill for a week in Ilfracombe tbh although maybe at a more holidayish time of the year

I haven't been to Ilfracombe for probably 35 years.

Perhaps it's nicer now.

THIS IS ACTION NOT {runs out of room} is very nearly as perfect a self-clowning as the classic comedy staple THINK AHEA{runs out of room}

NEVER PLA{runs out of room}

I went to Westward Ho! for a few hours in 1987.

I went to Westward Ho! for a few hours some time in the mid 70s as far as I can remember

feel like we covered a lot of the english seaside when i was a kid, with some extremely real england experiences along the way. i don't remember any of the south west seaside places being particularly bad. the east coast tho...

Useful conversation as I'm considering a break at the seaside (probably) in the new year.

Here's a thing I remember from seaside shops as a kid that I have not seen for years. In shops which sold souvenirs, there would be, hung up somewhere, little painted plaster faces of grizzled seafolk types -- one in a captain's cap, perhaps, one with a pipe, I don't remember all the others. They were maybe six inches high -- and I don't recall ever seeing them anywhere except in shops, but presumably someone bought them. They were powerfully ugly, and textured: I imagine batch-produced from moulds (they definitely had more a factory look than an artisanal look). My google-fu hasn't been good enough to find any on the net; though I've lots of other unbeautiful seaside material.

(there were also little model animals in the same style, which would have stood on a dresser or a mantelpiece or a windowsill -- and I certainly spotted these recently enough that the bestiary included some meerkats, but I think by then the faces had vanished)

Pretty we sure we had one of those grizzled old seadog plaster faces.

lol the necessary google term was of course "sea dog"
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/10/27/28/1027285401a970aeb534042f4e6d4d92.jpg

and the name of the art form is CHALK WARE

a full GiS array of chalk ware sea dogs

REAL COASTAL ENGLAND^^^

they are pinging memory currents that I can't quite turn into pictures, definitely. seaside tat shops are some of the most beautiful things from childhood that I can imagine - beach toys, crocks of scrumpy, saucy postcards, funny kitchen wall and toilet door signs, tea towels, plastic glow in the dark horror movie models, clotted cream, Wade Whimsies...

I think the one we had you hung on a wall, definitely the same shit though.

ok now there's pictures

and here is the superbly vintage website of the main purveyors of same: http://www.bossons.info/

(yes, hung on a wall is how i remember them, rather than perversely mounted on a black paper cupcake holder as above)

I bet they do Whimsies too

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/lot-images.atgmedia.com/SR/1848/2913013/52-201494134127_original.jpg

ok I've gone full rabbithole

I went to Westward Ho and Ilfracombe in 2015 and had a v agreeable time in both. Ilfracombe has probably changed less over the past few decades, but it has got that big damien hirst statue in the middle of the harbour now welcoming in the ships like a baby colossus. didn't see too much of that stuff though.

ships is a bit of an exaggeration, I'll go with boats