Pregled posta

Marketing

A view of the seafront at Bognor. It's famously alleged that the last words of King George V (1865-1936), in response to a suggestion that he might recover from his illness and visit Bognor Regis were "Bugger Bognor".

The bathing machine is a Victorian device that declined in popularity in the first decade of the 20th. century when mixed gender bathing became acceptable. The machine allowed people (especially women) to enter the water without being seen in their bathing costume by the opposite sex. How times have changed!

There are two modern close-up coloured views of a preserved bathing machine on the timandpep photostream - if you do a tags search, the codes 32BME65 and 42BME76 will get you there.

The postmark on the other side shows that the postcard was posted over a century ago on Wednesday the 19th. August 1908 to an address in C. Donegal. On the correspondence side of the card, the sender wrote:

'Dearest Daisy,
We are having a lovely time and had a delightful bathe today my first experience on a crowded beach it was great, we had one of those machines. I am writing this on the beach so excuse pencil. I hope all are well, am waiting for a letter. Love to Dad and Mum, not forgetting yourself, your affectionate sister Bee'.

So what else happened on that day? Not a lot, according to a fairly extensive Internet search.

However one year later to the day, on the 19th. August 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway held its first-ever automobile race of 5 miles. The first Indianapolis 500 took place on the 30th. May 1911, and apart from the two World Wars, has been an annual event ever since.

Silk is produced year round in Thailand by two types of silkworms, the cultured Bombycidae and wild Saturniidae. Most production is after the rice harvest in the southern and northeast parts of the country. Women traditionally weave silk on hand looms, and pass the skill on to their daughters as weaving is considered to be a sign of maturity and eligibility for marriage. Thai silk textiles often use complicated patterns in various colours and styles. Most regions of Thailand have their own typical silks. A single thread filament is too thin to use on its own so women combine many threads to produce a thicker, usable fiber. They do this by hand-reeling the threads onto a wooden spindle to produce a uniform strand of raw silk. The process takes around 40 hours to produce a half kilogram of Thai silk.

Many local operations use a reeling machine for this task, but some silk threads are still hand-reeled. The difference is that hand-reeled threads produce three grades of silk: two fine grades that are ideal for lightweight fabrics, and a thick grade for heavier material.


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