Ephemera

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Tue 22 Feb 2005

The Frightening Thing

Posted by anaglyph under Ephemera
[2] Comments

For many years now I’ve been carrying around this postcard in my collection of strange curios. The woman on the front is Madge Crichton, an actress of the early 20th Century, who, on a cursory Google search, seems to have been more famous for her appearance on postcards than much else. There’s another photo of Madge at this page – [Link]

Madge is not the reason I’ve kept the postcard though – this is what’s written on the back:

Dear Eileen,

Mick said he did not mean to frighten you he told me what he had it for.

He wants to go over to Burwood next Saturday night but I cannot go over till Saturday week.

I got a lot to tell you when I see you about Ethel

12/10/08 Mary

Now I don’t know about you, but I really want to know more about Mick, Eileen, Ethel and Mary, and particularly about the frightening thing that Mick had. Speculations welcome…

 

Mon 7 Feb 2005

Accidental Museums

Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Ephemera
Comments Off on Accidental Museums

Demolition of a building up on King St, in Newtown where I live, revealed this sign which must date around the 1940s. Green Coupons were a redeemable ration system used in WW2 in Australia. A new construction has now obscured the sign again, for another fifty years, perhaps.

 

Fri 4 Feb 2005

Diffuse Quantity Descriptors

Posted by anaglyph under Ephemera, Words
[3] Comments

Nurse Myra and I were having a discussion recently about the words that are used to denote an unfixed but still quantative indication of the numbers of certain things where you don’t wish (or are unable) to be too specific. Those are words like a few, several, some, a variety of etc. I don’t know whether there is an actual word for these kinds of pliable quantities, but there really should be. I’m calling them ‘Diffuse Quantity Descriptors’ until someone sets me straight.

Let me elaborate: we agreed that a few choices on the menu is more than two and possibly less than five. Several choices would be more than a few but possibly not as many as six or seven. A variety of choices might be as many as several, but possibly a a few more.

Curiously, when talking about time, these quantaties seem to shrink or expand according to actual purpose. “I’ll be gone for a few minutes” would possibly be five or six, or maybe even ten minutes whilst “I’ll be gone for a few hours” seems like it might reasonably encompass three or four hours. Several hours seems rather longer, but several minutes could be just a few.

I might ruminate on this for a few days, and you can be sure there will be several other posts on a variety of similar anomalies.

 

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