Sundays To Clear Out the Rust of the Week

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by Arundhati Basu

How is this Sunday going for you? I have been smelling the pages of old books that I laid my hands on for the smashing overall amount of 2 quid yesterday at a second-hand bookshop in Ludlow, and, inhaling a box of cookies I had stashed away and suddenly found on Friday evening in a dark corner of the pantry. Hidden treasures are not to be scorned, especially the buttery kinds, no?

Below is a shot of two pages from an autobiography by Nicolas Bentley, a 20th century British author and illustrator. It is an unusual autobiography. You do not come across those very often. Bentley said with a self-deprecating tinge: “..as I have very little imagination, not being a fisherman, and practically no memory, I realised that my autobiography, if it was to be written at all, must be written while my eyes though no longer innocent saucers were yet undimmed by the rheum of antiquity”. I was even more kicked to realised that he was the illustrator for a book – How to be an Alien (1946) by George Mikes – I have stacked into the library room of my childhood home in Calcutta. Travel – it makes you meet your childhood at unexpected places, or maybe I should have expected it because Mikes was writing a book on classic British humour (an instance of which is a chapter on sex that goes thus: ‘Continental people have sex lives: the English have hot water bottles’).

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Nicolas Bentley’s The Time of My Life
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Little rounds of heaven. You cannot stick to one.

Lastly, because I have been routing through my box of postcards every weekend, here are some tidbits for you.

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Theatre Poster from Hamburg 1883. Bought in Theater Figuren Museum in Lubeck, Germany.
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Theatre poster from  1910-11 representing the Schichtl family’s style of marionette theatre. The family’s work dates back to the 17th century. The Schichtls and their travelling cabaret & puppet theatre visited Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saxony and Thuringia.
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Sita, consort of Rama in Hindu mythology, reflected in an ancient form of storytelling-shadow puppetry.
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Notre Dame de Paris
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Place Blanche et Moulin Rouge
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Eighteenth century Parisian lady kitted out in a Circassian dress fashioned out of Italian taffeta gauze.
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Dinner menu from 1751 at the Chateau de Choisy in Val-de-marne in the Ile-de-France region. It belonged to Louis XV after he bought it in 1739. 
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An old poster of Lago di Como, Italy. 

 

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Arundhati Basu

The great affair in my life is to travel. I count myself immensely fortunate that my partner shares this passion. We are a team that likes to spend time planning and plotting out places to go. Destination check, flights check, accommodation check, cheesy grins check. Off we go.

19 thoughts on “Sundays To Clear Out the Rust of the Week”

  1. Really interesting postcards…I get emails, texts, photos, and FaceTime, but rarely postcards anymore. Sometimes the stamps themselves are the most valuable possession, at least to me. Enjoy your Sunday.

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    1. Thank you 🙂 Vice versa. Postcards are vanishing treasures. I buy them for myself and often address them to myself. A bit kookie but then that is just me. My brother has a stamp collection back in Calcutta. I used to be banned from touching them but I bet you know a thing or two about what we do when we are told what to do… Have a lovely Sunday yourself. Cheers.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Nice blogpost. I won’t use any exclamation points here 😉 Loved the postcards. Enjoyed the glimpse into the past and how people entertained themselves. The shadow puppet card was beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

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