Hello Again

A few weeks have passed since Boris, quite rightly limited our freedom of movement in an effort to control the spread of Coronavirus and now things are beginning to sink in.  The weather at first was quite warm but soon changed and at present is much cooler and staying inside is not so much of an effort.

My cat, Ike is sitting beside me no doubt alarmed at reading that one of his feline cousins in Belgium has contracted the virus (I wish I had never taught the cat to read).

                                                                   

Stuart’s Very Clever, Beautiful Cat, Ike

It is a normal afternoon in the Big Brother House.  The cat is in meltdown and I am pining for the football results which I know will not magically appear on the television screen.

Enough of this nonsense as it is time for another short article and I have chosen a Daily Mirror cartoon which ran from 1932 to 1959.  The heroine will be well known to the older generations who will quite easily remember Jane and her daily adventures.

I first came across Jane when I was a child as I found some vintage copies of the Daily Mirror which carried the cartoons.  Even though I was quite young, I was already following the adventures of Garth and for some reason, Jane just clicked with me.

Unlike Garth, the saucy innuendos were probably too much for my tender years but there was something about Jane that appealed.  When I asked my mother about her she noted that the adventures of Jane had commenced when she was as young as me.

I did not know that much about Jane unlike my beloved Garth, and was quite surprised when I studied her history.

Jane was actually created by a chap named Norman Pett and made her debut on the 5th of December 1932.

Initially Norman’s wife, Mary modelled for him but later in the 1930s decided to give up modelling and pay more attention to her golf.  To fill the vacancy, Norman recruited a girl called Chrystabel Leighton-Porter who became very associated with the character.

The actual title of the cartoon was Jane’s Journal or, the Dairy of a Bright Young Thing.

This was indirectly borrowed from Evelyn Waugh’s satirical 1930’s novel, Vile Bodies which in part dealt with the Bright Young Things in a carefree London between the wars.

Norman’s cartoon was really just the adventures of a young innocent ingenue who had the habit of losing her clothes (usually through no fault of her own).  She was accompanied on her adventures by her pet dachshund called Fritz.

Jane reached the peak of her popularity during WW2 and although she nearly always ended up in her underwear, she was never seen fully naked (rather like the early Carry On films).  But this all changed one day when Jane was surprised whilst getting out of a bath and fell into the arms of a group of very lucky British soldiers.

My mother noted that this unfortunate accident is said to have vastly improved the morale of troops serving abroad, although I have found no evidence of this.

In 1948, Norman handed over the cartoon to his assistant Michael Hubbard who steered the ship until the 10th of October 1959  when Jane married her boyfriend Georgie and lived happily ever after.

Although there have been attempts to raise Jane, these have not been successful which in way is quite sad as the world needs cheering up.  Just like the wonderful Carry On films, Jane seems consigned to history in these puritanical times where everybody seems to take offence at everything.

If Jane was resurrected, then rather like the kill joys who ended Page Three and the Miss World beauty contests, there would be accusations of female exploitation and in the current correct climate, the Daily Mirror would be forced to drop the cartoon.

Jane was above all an innocent who just managed to get into a lot of scrapes and although things always worked out, she was often in more danger of catching a jolly good cold than getting hurt.

Looking back, I can remember the Glynis Barber TV series in the early 1980s and the 1987 movie Jane and the Lost City, but I was not aware that Chrystabel Leighton- Porter starred in a 1949 movie called The Adventures of Jane which I am told is available on DVD.

It might be an idea to try to find this DVD on EBAY or Amazon as we all seem to have a great deal of time on our hands.

Although Jane is no longer in the Daily Mirror, my hero Garth is still there and having run initially between 1943 and 1997. he was revived in 2011 and has been a fixture ever since and when I can, I try to keep up with his adventures.

I used to purchase the Daily Mirror so that I could catch up on Garth and the latest football but as it now sits somewhere in the black hole between The Star and The Sun, I no longer risk the damage to my sensibilities and read The Independent instead.

If in a parallel world Jane did return to the Daily Mirror, then I know that I would be tested but that is an abstract question.

But here is the eternal question – What has this got to do with Hungerford Antiques Arcade?

Unfortunately, I cannot show you pictures of Jane or Garth as the Daily Mirror own the copyrights.  You can however, look them up on Google images which will bring a smile to your face.

Well surprisingly quite a lot, as vintage copies of the Daily Mirror (amongst other newspapers) frequently show up in the Arcade and are incredibly cheap to buy.  I tend not to buy vintage newspapers as Ike quite often takes more than a normal interest in them, which is a little worrying.   He is now happily asleep next to me without a worry in the world you will be glad to hear.

How did I pacify him you might ask?  Well that was easy, I just told him that the date was the 1st of April and that newspapers do play pranks on their readers.

I do hope that on the 1st of April this year our newspapers have a little fun away from the doom and gloom.

It is not much fun at present, but things will improve and one must remember that it was far worse for my mother’s generation during WW2.  If only there was another Jane to take us through these unpleasant days.

Do look after yourselves and remember that summer is not that far away.

Be Safe

Stuart & Ike 

Hungerford Arcade has been closed for eleven days now under the Government guidelines, which we completely agree with.  During the closure and to our complete surprise, we have had lots of emails from customers at home and overseas, who wish us well and then go on to talk about how they really miss coming to the Arcade, what it means to them and how they long for the day that we re-open. That is why I am writing this blog for all of you.

The Arcade owners, Adrian and Hazel are looking after each and every one of us during this pandemic.  They, the managers, staff and stallholders together are like a big happy family.  Everyone is in touch as a group on a daily basis through social media where we can reminisce and have some lighthearted fun and at the same time, look out for one another.  We all miss the Arcade and our wonderful customers very much and feel very lost without the daily chit- chat about antiques and the interesting lives of you who come through our door.  It is a big part of all of our lives.

Our March Newsletter has just been published and you can read it by going to the drop-down menu at the top of this page or just click here  There are also articles to read or, you can just take a tour of our website and find other things that may interest you.

I must just say that I have not been out.  I am at home where I can access the Arcade email account and reply to all the emails that come through.

All of us here at Hungerford Arcade would like to say a big thank you to each and everyone of you for getting in touch with us.  Stay safe and healthy and one day in the near future, we will all be reunited back into the world that we know and love.

Rita and everyone at Hungerford Arcade

Hello Again 

As we are all aware, we are all on something of a lockdown due to the Coronavirus outbreak.  The precautions in the UK, although at present lighter than in other countries, are still a great change to the way we live.

I have always considered that the freedoms we experience here in the UK are the envy of many other countries.  Therefore, the raft of measures introduced by the government have been something of a culture shock and we are taking a little time to get used to them.

These very sensible measures I am sure will take us through the current emergency and out the other side.  There may be further rules that we will have to follow before the desired morning dawns, but it is all for the common good.

We are technically at war, not with another country but with an unseen enemy, so it is quite logical that wartime rules need to be followed.  This is all I am going to say about what is happening at present, but it did set me thinking about whether people will start writing poetry about the situation.

Not poets but ordinary people like you and me, will record our experiences by writing poetry.  I think we will go in this direction.  The reason I am saying this is that during most wars poetry has been written.

In recent memory, the poetry of the Great War stands out with poets such as Wilfred Owen recording the horrors of the conflict.

The Second World War was different to the Great War in that unless you are interested in the subject, not so many of the poets are easily remembered.

Keith Douglas and Sidney Keyes spring to mind, but there were many others and what was also different was that the average soldier was also encouraged to write poetry (usually in the shape of poetry competitions) and the best would be collected and published in anthologies, usually with a foreword by somebody as senior as Montgomery.

I am most probably totally wrong (and apologise if I am),  but I have not really found much evidence of this during the Great War.  Yet, in my collection of poetry books, I have examples of poetry written and collected during the Second World War.

My first book is simply called Air Force Poetry and is a collection of poems written by men serving in the RAF and the FAA.  I am not going to judge the poems, but some are quite fine.

But, what makes this anthology all the more haunting is that it is recorded in the foreword that six of the men who contributed poems were killed in action before the publication.

The other two collections were penned by members of the Eighth Army, some whilst serving in the Western Desert between December 1942 and February 1943 and others whilst serving in Italy and Sicily during the period from July 1943 to March 1944.

Poems from Italy and Poems From The Desert are the simple titles of these Eighth Army anthologies.

The Italian collection has an introduction written by Siegfried Sassoon and the Desert poems a foreword written by Field-Marshall Montgomery.  These are, I believe, just three examples of poetry anthologies of this nature.

It is very likely that the Navy thought it was a good idea and published its own poems (this said I have yet to see one).

Surprisingly, these small volumes are reasonably easy to find and I have picked up each of my books from the Arcade over the last couple of years.  There is an extensive military section in the bookshop under Rafters (facing you to the left as you climb the first set of stairs) and these books are very cheap and a pleasure to own.

I have kept this article short as we have many other things to do, but if this has sparked an interest then I am pleased, as I intend to as long as this current emergency lasts, to pen the odd bite-sized article for you to read (or to help you sleep).

Usually I am bombing from here to there and back again and tend to note my articles up on fag packets whilst travelling around, but although I am not self-isolating (I fall outside of the noted catgories at present) I am finding that I have time on my hands so I thought it would be fun to pop the odd article down the tubes.

Please look after yourselves.

Stuart Miller-Osborne