Flags of the World, a little bit of our history

Now you can be very stuffy about history.  

At least one of my history teachers dismissed everything that had happened after 1914 as not worthy of being called history, and more recently my use of on line historical sources was ridiculed as not serious research.

So with that in mind here is a little bit of history delivered through a collection of bubble gum cards, issued in the 1950s which I collected avidly.

They were the Flags of the World* and came in waxed envelopes with a thin sheet of pink bubble gum.

For weeks after you purchased the cards they retained that faint sweet smell.

Looking back I hate to think what the gum did to my teeth or my insides.

But the cards were one of those crazes which took over me and my friends.

You bought them from the local sweet shop for what I guess as a penny a time.

There were the serious collectors who kept their collections in immaculate condition and then there were those who used them to play card games.

I wandered between the two.

The game was simple enough, two cards were rested against a wall and the idea was to flick cards to knock them down.

The one who was successful got to collect all those that had been flicked but which had failed to deliver the knock down blow.

You could use any picture cards.  Back before the way these would have been the cards given away with cigarettes, but by the time I was growing up the “fag card” had been superseded by those that came in packets of tea.

So the tobacco smelling cards had given way to those smelling of tea and with Flags of the World came that aroma of bubble gum.

Now the Flags of the World were much favoured for the game because they were bigger and easier to flick and easier to knock down.

For most of my friends that was about it.  The flag itself and the facts that were contained on the back about each country were pretty much ignored.

And that was a pity because contained on the back of each card were facts like the Capital city, the population. Type of government, money unit and language.

Nor was that all because assuming that one day you might visit the Soviet Union. Israel or Italy there was the section How They Say.

This gave you four words which were seldom the same from card to card and offered up the translation.

So card number 26 which was Great Britain had the words Policeman, Movies, Candy and Terrific for which the translations ran BOOBY, CINMEA, SWEETS, and TOP-HO.

All of which is odd enough but places when for Italy the words were Hello, BON-JAW-NAY, Friend, AH-ME-GO, Goodbye AREEV-VEH-DEH-CHAY, and Thanks, GRATS-SEE-AH.

The cards were produced in the USA and so distances were calculated in air miles from New York.

All of which gives the cards a wonderful entree into the world of the 1950s when ait r travel which was still a distance experience for most of us was never the less becoming a more common form of global transport than the oceans.

And then there are those simple history lessons which come from flags which have long since vanished as the governmental system they represented have passed into history.

The USSR and all those east European communist states have gone as has that imperialist concoction known as Indo China along with the old Republic of South Africa and many more.

But despite all the uncertainties of the period the manufactures concluded the series with the flag of the United Nations which I always thought a nice touch.

That said I never remember coming across the blue flag of the U.N, for some of the cards were always more difficult to collect than others.

So for every flag of France I bought that of the USA always proved elusive.

I have long lost all mine and was only reminded of them recently when I came across the site Flags of the World where for a modest and in some cases less than modest out lay I could recreate my collection and in doing so savour something of the 1950s.

Now I bought them from our corner newsagents, but now all of them are available for at a tad  more than I paid for them at Flags of the World, sadly without the bubblegum.

And in that post Brexit world I will leave you with that flag of the UN and reflect on international cooperation and greater understanding.

But not quite, because the flag and the European Union still exist even if we may be making our torturous way out.

So here is a favourite of mine and one that I am sure Flags of the World would have included.

Location; the World






Pictures; Flags of the World, courtesy of Flags of the World


*Flags of the World, http://www.deanscards.com/c/716/1956-Topps-Flags-of-the-World

Parole...... parole .....parole ……

One of the unexpected things for me about being dyslexic is a sheer love of words.

Words, 1941

That said it can be a challenge to spell them especially when even the spell check gives up on me.

At which stage I have to sack the word find an alternative and rewrite the sentence to accommodate the substitute word.

Added to which at 74 I sometimes find remembering the word can be irksome.

But despite those hiccups I love playing with words finding a rhythm with a collection of words and just “going off on one”.

And that sometimes means a story slides away in a different direction to the one intended, and along the way the odd poet or memorable quote gets incorporated into the text.

So today I was going to write reflective piece on my Christmas books* but downstairs Rosa had tuned in to Rai 1 HD, which is an Italian station offering up a mix of “family” orientated material ranging from current affairs, discussion shows to a heap of quiz programmes, soaps, and films.

Coca Cola, Varese, 2020

It is of course a familiar and popular set of programmes which can be replicated on all our main TV channels, but what is interesting is the growing use of English across a whole series of the Italian shows.

Flags of the World, 1956

In some cases, it is a word like “on line” or an expression for which I am sure there will be an Italian equivalent. 

And then there are heaps of songs with English lyrics which are used to introduce a topic or chosen in preference to an Italian song in talent shows and variety extravaganzas.

All of which was very evident over Christmas, when performers from Bing Crosby to David Bowie, Chris Rea and Elvis Presley were played often back-to-back and accompanied by dancing Christmas trees, smiling elves and glittering baubles.

I don’t remember it being so pronounced in the past and it may not be the case for other Italian channels or in the output from other European TV stations.

But perhaps it just all part of that giant interplay of word exchange which has seen modern English a wash with words, and names for sorts of things and food from around the world.

And some of which have become so embedded in the language that we don’t even give a second thought to their origins.

Along with those plays on words courtesy of Flags of the World, which for the price of an old one penny gave you a picture card with a national flag on one side, and on the reverse a mix of interesting facts including "How They Say", Hello, Friend, Goodbye and Thanks.

Not that it ever advanced my competency in foreign languages.

Loto, 2012

Pictures; Words, Acanthus, 1941***, Coca Cola, 2020 and Loto, 2012, Varese from the collection of Andrew Simpson and card  number 58, Flags of the World, courtesy of Flags of the World**

*Pax, Tom Holland, Northerners, Brian Groom, The Definitive Desert Island Discs, Ian Gittins and the Lost Rivers of Manchester, Geoffrey Ashworth

**Flags of the World, http://www.deanscards.com/c/716/1956-Topps-Flags-of-the-World

***from Lilliput Vol 9 No.1 July 1941

Don’t try this one at home ……………

 This is one of those warnings which extends beyond the home to everywhere and involves an old coin, some brick dust and a hankey.

The penny that escaped the playground, 2023

With the passage of the years, I can’t remember when we used brick dust and a handkerchief to breath life into an old penny.

But it will be around 1959 or 1960 and I would be nine rising ten, and for a while it was all the rage in the playground of Edmund Waller School in New Cross.

At the time it seemed almost like magic.  You rubbed the clothe against the brickwork and then transferred the dust onto the coin and rubbed vigorously and after a while the dirt of decades began to vanish, and the penny took on a bright new appearance.

Preferably the penny couldn’t be too old or the detail on the coin would not benefit from the exercise.

Of course, today I am not surprised that the continued application of an abrasive would do the business.

The downside was that the surface of the penny became pitted, and worse still the practice left dents in the brick work which in some places resembled the craters of the moon.

And over sixty years later I wonder what staff and students make of these circular depressions in the bricks, but I suppose weathering will have probably left our handiwork less obvious.

And Edward VII remained safe, 2023

Why we stopped is a mystery.  There may have been a dictate from on high about damaging the walls of the school, or more likely we just got bored with something which didn’t do much for your hands or the penny, and led to difficult conversations with mother about the state of the hankies.

The disappearance of the old pennies followed by their copper  decimal equivalents will have pretty much killed off the practice, and now as we edge ever closer to a coinless existence few ten year olds will ever feel the need to stand in the playground with a handkerchief and some brick dust.

Cleaning your pennies will have faded into the past along with heaps of old playground games, children’s songs.

One of which I remember pitched a large number of American television stars  of Westerns into a rhyming story using their names set against a series of adventures.  It was in its way a kid’s version of of that 1959 song “Delaware” by Irving Gordan and made popular by Perry Commo which referenced 15 US States in the form of puns, "like Della wear, new jersey, Calla 'phone ya, how ar' ya, Missus sip, mini-soda, Ora gone, I'll ask 'er, taxes, Wiscon sin, new brass key, Arkan saw, Tenne see, Flora die and misery".*

I have tried remembering the kids version but it has long since been lost from my memory, although if I am honest I was rubbish remembering all the connections back then.

Great Britain Flag no. 26, 1956, Flags of the World

I guess it might well have started life as a skipping song and just transferred from one playground activity to another.

One of which will have been flicking cards, where you put two picture cards against a wall and flicked other ones  towards the two propped up.  

The winner was the first to knock a card down and the prize were the cards already on the floor.  

Originally it would have been cigarette or fag cards which by the 1950s had become the picture cards from boxes of tea bags.

But the favoured cards because they were so much bigger were those from a series called Flags of the World,

Italy, no. 80, 1956, Flags of the World

They came with a disgusting bit of bubble gum, and carried the flags of nations as they were in the mid 1950s and had useful information on the back including each country's currency, population, capital city and a translation of the word hello.

Often the bubble gum had gone hard and brittle, and the cards for ever afterward smelt of perfumed bubble gum.

Such were the things we did in the playground.

Location; in a playground

Picture; 1909 Edward VII penny from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the flag of the Great Britain, no.26 and Italy, no.80, 1956, courtesy of Flags of the World, Dean's Cards,  http://www.deanscards.com/c/716/1956-Topps-Flags-of-the-World

*Delaware, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_(song)

**Flags of the World, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Flags%20of%20the%20World

Flags of the World, a little bit of our history

Now you can be very stuffy about history.  

At least one of my history teachers dismissed everything that had happened after 1914 and more recently my use of online historical sources was ridiculed as not serious research.

So with that in mind here is a little bit of history delivered through a collection of bubble gum cards, issued in the 1950s which I collected avidly.

They were the Flags of the World and came in waxed envelopes with a thin sheet of pink bubble gum.

For weeks after you purchased the cards they retained that faint sweet smell.

Looking back I hate to think what the gum did to my teeth or my insides.

But the cards were one of those crazes which took over me and my friends.

You bought them from the local sweet shop for waht I guess as a penny a time.

There were the serious collectors who kept their collections in immaculate condition and then there were those who used them to play card games.

I hovered between the two.

The game was simple enough, two cards were rested against a wall and the idea was to flick cards to knock them down.

The one who was successful got to collect all those that had been flicked but which had failed to deliver the knock down blow.

You could use any picture cards.  Back before the way these would have been the cards given away with cigarettes, but by the time I was growing up the “fag card” had been superseded by those that came in packets of tea.

So the tobacco smelling cards and given way to those smelling of tea and with Flags of the World came that aroma of bubble gum.

Now the Flags of the World were much favoured for the game because they were bigger and easier to flick and easier to knock down.

For most of my friends that was about it.  The flag itself and the facts that were contained on the back about each country were pretty much ignored.

And that was a pity because contained on the back of each card were facts like the Capital city, the population. Type of government, money unit and language.

Nor was that all because assuming that one day you might visit the Soviet Union. Israel or Italy there was the section How They Say.

This gave you four words which were seldom the same from card to card and offered up the translation.

So card number 26 which was Great Britain had the words Policeman, Movies, Candy and Terrific for which the translations ran BOOBY, CINMEA, SWEETS, and TOP-HO.

All of which is odd enough but places when for Italy the words were Hello, BON-JAW-NAY, Friend, AH-ME-GO, Goodbye AREEV-VEH-DEH-CHAY, and Thanks, GRATS-SEE-AH.

The cards were produced in the USA and so distances were calculated in air miles from New York.

All of which gives the cards a wonderful entree into the world of the 1950s when ait r travel which was still a distance experience for most of us was never the less becoming a more common form of global transport than the oceans.

And then there are those simple history lessons which come from flags which have long since vanished as the governmental system they represented have passed into history.

The USSR and all those east European communist states have gone as has that imperialist concoction known as Indo China along with the old Republic of South Africa and many more.

But despite all the uncertainties of the period the manufactures concluded the series with the flag of the United Nations which I always thought a nice touch.

That said I never remember coming across the blue flag of the U.N, for some of the cards were always more difficult to collect than others.

So for every flag of France I bought that of the USA always proved elusive.

I have long lost all mine and was only reminded of them recently when I came across the site Flags of the World where for a modest and in some cases less than modest out lay I could recreate my collection and in doing so savour something of the 1950s.

Now I bought them from our corner newsagents, but now all of them are available for at a tad  more than I paid for them at Flags of the World, sadly without the bubblegum.

And in that post Brexit world I will leave you with that flag of the UN and reflect on international cooperation and greater understanding.

Pictures; Flags of the World, courtesy of 
Flags of the World, http://www.deanscards.com/c/716/1956-Topps-Flags-of-the-World