Thursday 28 June 2012

Remembering Nostalgia...


...and an Award

Two months have passed since I completed the A to Z of 1950s/60s Nostalgia. It was crazy and manic but I miss it in a sadistic sort of way. So when I received a 7 x 7 award from Rebecca Bradley, asking me to flag up seven of my posts under seven specific categories, I decided to use it as an excuse to revisit my A to Z month of nostalgia. 

First of all, a big thanks to Rebecca Bradley for the award. Rebecca used to blog at Life in Clarity but she now has a shiny new blog home. It’s called Rebecca Bradley, Murder Down to a Tea and it promises to be a bloody affair if the headline artwork has anything to do with it.

Rebecca has asked that in return for my 7 x 7 award I must post up a link to seven of my posts using the following criteria. In my usual obedient way I’ve bent the rules just a little so that I can include aspects of the A to Z that covered more than one post, if you see what I mean...

1.  My most beautiful A to Z Nostalgia piece: T is for Titles: I’m not talking about one specific post here. I loved creating the title for every one of the posts. It took far longer than was necessary but it was fascinating to do. I used the Microsoft WordArt facility which even allows you to colour a letter in with a piece of clipart of your choosing. I love them all but my S post shows a good variety of alphabet styles. 

2.  My most helpful A to Z Nostalgia piece: I suppose I wasn’t trying to be helpful but in E I did talk about education, eleven plus and equality and you can’t get much more helpful than that!

3.  My most popular A to Z Nostalgia piece: According to the stats it was O - Old Spice After Shave and Op-art. I’m not sure if the pictures of Op-art drew in the viewers. I do love all that psychedelic op-art stuff. This was closely followed by G with a piece about Gangs including Teddy Boys and Mods and Rockers.

4.  My most controversial A to Z Nostalgia piece: Every post started with a smell to get you in the mood. Well, people and homes did smell very different in those days! I think my body odour mentions were the most controversial. U had Underarms for the Smell and Underwear in the Memories [plus this fabulous photo of Marlon Brando who was reputed to be the first to wear a t-shirt as outerwear rather than underwear!]

5.  My most surprisingly successful A to Z Nostalgia piece: My biggest surprise was the Comments. By halfway through I had a few people competing to be first on the blog in the morning to get their additional memories posted up. A special thank you to my sister Rifka and to Pat Posner from Write up the Hill who, I believe, are still discussing their 1950s memories via email! You can see them chatting in most of the Comments. In my K post they’re discussing Kiaora drinks and forgetting all about talking to me! 

6.  My most underrated A to Z Nostalgia piece: According to the stats it was W which is a shame. I’d been looking forward to writing about Watch with Mother

7.  My most pride-worthy A to Z Nostalgia piece: That’s easy. It has to be my Z post because I was so proud [and relieved] to have completed it! 

[A note to type-font purists: Yes, there are two different styles of fonts in this blog post. Blogger threw one of its wobblies this afternoon. Some of the paragraphs are in a different font and I can't get it to change to the same style. Neither can I understand why it has done it. *sigh*]