Or; N is for Nostalgia - Look what I found!
There's actually all sorts of stuff coming out of the woodwork, and not just
from my late Mother's effects, I've started finding stuff I've not seen since
it went into storage, or even things I couldn't remember having! But here's two
tins, which are interesting for very different reasons, a third title could
have been F is for From the Sublime to the Ridiculous!
My Grandfather's Princess Mary's Christmas
Fund tin, 1914, not exactly rare, but some of the prices on feeBay, for poorer
examples, suggests this is worth a half-dozen of your Herald swoppet knights, on horseback, equally, you can find copies
for 15 or 20-quid! Issued to various groups and tranches of service men and
women from 1914 onward, I won't bore you with the whole tale; you can read
it all here - IWM.
The contents of Granddad's tin; the pipe
has been used, and I guess the longer stem was his own and just kept in the tin
as a spare/fall-back? The tobacco pouch
is missing, along with the photo's seen in the above link, but I know I've seen
the little one of Princess Mary, and possibly the one of the King and Queen,
while sorting so we will return to this as I reassemble it more fully in the
future.
Indeed I know I have the bullet-pencil in
my own collection (and always wondered whose 'cap badge' it was - it was sold
to me by the late Eddie Audsley - vintage tool expert - as Trench-Art), the
cards are in the envelope and we'll look at them in a minute, but the piece of
scrap-metal is more interesting.
A direct translation of the German Brennstoft
Übernahmevent is 'fuel takeover event' which I suspect transliterates
to fuel cut-off valve? Something like that; fuel safety valve, and presumably
came from an enemy vessel? But who's and when?
Granddad served first on HMS
London supporting the ANZAC landings in the Dardanelles ('Gallipoli'), where
gunboat activity is known to have occurred, and mostly (early) German vessels
re-flagged to the Ottoman's but with German crews or - at the least - German
officers?
Equally there was activity in the
Mediterranean in support of the Italian fleet, where again Motor Torpedo Boats
and Motor Gunboats played a part on all sides, while the final hostilities of
that period was Granddad's apparent participation (vessel currently unknown) in
the Russian campaign of 1919, where both (all!) sides lost, captured or sank
motorboats which might have been supplied by Germany, or taken from them in
1918?
And I'm only looking toward the smaller vessels
as they would be most likely to have fuel cut-off valves (or their labels) easy
to hand for a quick removal with a sharp implement for keepsake/trophy
purposes?
The cigarette packet is quite small, now . . . I
wondered if that was for space, or budget, but suspect they were often (even
commonly?) smaller than the ones we are used to now, filters weren't introduced
widely until after the Second World War, but it's about a half of the mass of a
modern pack of filterless Camels - which this author has had cause to
persevere-with, in the past, when filtered ones weren't around!
The two cards; and two points of note;
firstly while the 1915 card is shown on the above Imperial War Museum link (and
in the excellent primer - Tommy’s War:
British Military Memorabilia 1914-1918 by Peter Doyle), neither source
explains how a second (or subsequent?) card/s was/were issued/received once the
recipient had been given his or her 2014 tin. Now I get that if your tin was
one of the late ones, you might get a card for whichever year you received it,
but how did you get a second, and why do they all seem to be '14 or '15, where
are '16 and 1917 cards?
The other point is a bit darker, the
dropping of 'Happy Christmas' from the later card; clearly someone pointed out,
to the committee organising the fund, that it was impossible to have a happy
Christmas under fire in a trench full of mud, rats and body-parts? Or on an
Atlantic convoy looking for submarines which were looking for you, in an
ice-storm? So the epithet was shortened to 'Victory' wishes only!
Anyway, that's the sublime, now I'll lower
the tone considerably, with the ridiculous!
I found this in the garage; modern archeology - Knickers in a Tin! I vaguely remember
Mum's rather flighty Canadian friend Janet (of Perrier premium fame) giving it to her for a laugh one Christmas
when we were quite little (Janet also took Playgirl
magazine!), and it became a staple of my Mother's breakdown-kit, moving from
car to car, and thence, eventually, to a damp garage where the conditions have
faded all but the British Knickers,
so I can't tell who made it, or when, but I think you can still get such stuff
in Anne Summers or other adult
outlets, as Stag or Hen gifts?
Realising it was to all intents and
purposes gash now, I took the trusty army tin-opener to it, to finally reveal
the supposed risqué contents . . .
. . . only to find slightly twee knickers,
with a Union flag overprint on some indestructible faux-silk, metallic blue,
granny-pants! What's left of the tin will be weighed-in with the next lot of
scrap metal and the knickers have already gone to the clothing bank! More tins to come.