Hidden Treasures - Part Three
We’re back with more hidden treasures that we’ve uncovered for your enjoyment (and ours too!) Part one and part two of this lovely series are also available to read on our blog. Definitely catch up if you haven’t done so yet.
On to today’s wonderful selection... As always, any comments, help, additional information on any of the treasure will be gratefully received!
1.
We absolutely love finding old, forgotten love notes in our vintage books. It’s like a secret snippet into the past.
“I love you darling: miss your miserable wife just a little - I won’t deserve it, but try just the same. See you Saturday. I love you, I love you. God bless, Jill. X X X X X”
Ah, our hearts.
2. 
A brilliant, nostalgia filled poem written by J.I. Jones who sent in his writings to his local newspaper. An educated guess would date the newspaper back to the 1970s - the obituaries on the flip side of this snippet date around 1973.
Here’s a transcript of the poem:
IF
If you wore a sack long trousers, when you were only six,
slid down the tip on barrel staves ‘mid other fancy tricks,
If you’ve heeled a ring for marbles, and wore your knuckles raw,
with a knob from a brass bedstead, as your very best taw;
If you ever had a hook-and-wheel, ran with bursting heart,
when there weren’t so many motor-cars, mostly horse and cart.
If you climbed the breast to fly kites, with miles of Co-op string,
of course, you always made your own, that was the proper thing.
If you remember fag-cards, and the joy of sets complete,
the games to play with doublers at the corner of the street;
If you have played at nip-cat-run, or even catty-dog,
or carved yourself a model boat from bark stripped off a log.
If you’ve put pins on a tramline, to watch them squash out flat,
coveted dad’s old trilby, just to make a cowboy hat;
If you knew five different ways of how to spin a top,
and you could whip a jacky-jumper to really make it hop;
If you’ve staggered down the paving, with milk-tins tied to boots,
and can remember tiger-nuts of chewed on Spanish root.
If you’ve made a rugby ball with brown paper and some string,
used it to play gaining-ground, practised passing with a tin;
If you excelled at dick-stones, knew the rule of dip-dap-doh,
played at kick-a-tin, or bull-rag, and other games galore.
If you’ve done all of these my boy, and vouch for everyone,
Then you are past middle-age, and getting on, my son.
We love the clever twist on Rudyard Kipling’s brilliant poem.
3. 
This bookmark is an advert for the National Book Token Scheme and dates back to at least the late 1930s and from what we can assume. How's that for an early piece of marketing?!The Scheme began in 1932 and is still running successfully today! The tokens acted as gift vouchers for nearly all booksellers across the UK.
The testimonials on the bookmark come from three men: J.B. Priestley, Lord Baden-Powell and Rev W.H. Elliott.
J.B. Priestley was an English novelist, social commentator, and scriptwriter. Born in 1894, Priestley lived until he was 100 years old! He said:
“The Book Tokens scheme removes the one great drawback to giving books as presents and therefore is to be most heartily welcomed by everybody. I wish it enormous success.”
Lord Baden-Powell was a British army officer and the finder of the Scouts. He died in 1941, hence our assumption of this token being from the 1930s. He said:
“I think this scheme of Book Tokens is a very excellent one, both in encouraging people to form their own judgement in the matter of reading and in encouraging those to read who might otherwise not do so.”
Rev W.H Elliott said:
The system is one which is quite admirable in every way, inasmuch as it prevents friends giving unsuitable books, as so often they do.”
A big thank you to Stacey at the National Book Token Scheme for her helpful information!
4. 
This postcard is actually a business card for an Italian restaurant called Siambelli. The postcard is to celebrate the restaurant’s 50th anniversary. It’s based in New York, East 50th Street to be more precise! We did some research to find that the restaurant seems to have recently closed. A big shame! We love pasta.
5. 
This next treasure really tickled us. It’s an obesity form given by a doctor’s surgery based in Surrey. Due to the content of the note, we can only assume that this treasure dates back to at least the 1970s.
Some of the listed foods to be avoided are; pastries, cakes, chocolates, scones, gravies, and meat pies.
We've got to be honest, this note isn’t selling the ‘obesity reducing diet’ to us!
6. 
This selection of photos we are all found together in the same book. We can only assume they belong to the same family. As always, we would absolutely love to reunite these old, special photographs back to their rightful owners. Any help would be hugely appreciated.
We’re not entirely sure of the date that these photographs were taken but we would say that each image is from slightly different time periods. An educated guess would say 1950 - 1960. The picture of the little boy in his kilt makes us think that the family in these photographs are likely to have Scottish roots.
We love this little sketch found in the front page of one of our old books! So simple but so lovely. It appears the artist has signed his work too, though like any signature it’s pretty hard to work out!
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Thanks so much for reading, we hope you loved this edition of our Hidden Treasures series and we will be back with more soon.
Watch this space X
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