Tuesday, March 04, 2014

A Cocktail Of Printing Ink and Colour Dyes


The Spring Clean of the infamous back passage brought to light a collection of old bus tickets yesterday. I have no idea where they come from although I do recall that Uncle Frank had a collection of vintage tickets so they may be part of that. The delight of the tickets is twofold : first the colours (I think we will get the guest bedroom decorated in a colour to match the 2/4 return from Churchridge Luxury Coaches), and secondly the material. Some are printed on that fine old cardboard that used to be the material of choice for railway tickets and has a feeling of real substance about it. Others are printed on thick paper, the kind you could chew on the way home from school and forever more taste that fine combination of printing ink and colour dyes. Tickets back then were tactile, substantial, capable of being recycled endless times as bookmarks or earwax scrapers. Unlike the squalid thin paper excuses you receive today, when you alighted from the bus you didn't cast them aside like bad administrative memories. You saved them, caressed them, and carefully stored them away as gifts for generations yet to be born.

9 comments:

  1. You are so right!

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  2. There's something Farrow & Ball about the colours!

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    Replies
    1. Just looked at their website and you are right. Now I know where to get the paint for the bedroom from

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    2. Are you sure they're not National Trust tickets - they use a lot of Farrow & Ball.

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  3. works of art really

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  4. A ticket to the Phantom of the Opera was precious as you could relive it one more time remembering the entire experience.

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  5. So many tickets were transported home because we did not litter back then. Then, there were more uses for old tickets, not just chewing gum. The old waste not, want not mentality used them for bookmarks, wrote notes on the back.

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  6. I guess it's all due to technology. they had something that required stiff paper for printing. Now it can be shoved out wit thin paper.

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  7. How enterprising of Leicester City Council to offer a Late Passeneger Service; were they in competition with the undertaker?

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