Bradford and Amsterdam - 1974

[squirmelia]

These postcards of Bradford and Amsterdam were torn from a scrapbook that was smeared with glue and greetings cards, a scrapbook that I barely remember. Rough fragments of grey sugar paper clung to the backs of the postcards, covering most of the words that had been written. The postmark revealed that 1974 was the year the cards had travelled, years before I was born, and many more years before I would go to Amsterdam myself. I've still never been to Bradford.

Comments

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I was sure that the first one was Amsterdam and the second Bradford until I looked at the caption. The first is almost exactly as I remember the view from Schiphol Airport.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Actually, I had almost forgotten the first time I was in Amsterdam, on the way to Berlin. I waited at the station, early in the morning, before anywhere was open, and it did look more like the first postcard than the second!

[gentio.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to concur with that one, i definitely remember amsterdam being alot more grey and tower block like than green and leafy :)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. I don't think those people were there when I went there either. Tch.

[electrodeserter.livejournal.com]

Forgive the obvious question, then, but why do you have a postcard of Bradford in 1974?

I love things which evoke the nonglamorous seventies. I don't know why, perhaps the mind simply needs a counterbalance between all the glammy punky stuff and the rest, a reminder that the 1976 Hartlepool Industrial Conference was going on at the same time or something. I don't know what I'm talking about.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

My mum made me sort out my old toys and stuff, and I found one of the scrapbooks I had glued such things in when I was a child. Presumably someone had visited Bradford and sent it to her or my grandmother, and they then let me cover it with glue. :) It looks so dreamy somehow.

[huylen.livejournal.com]

o sweet seventies
how i wish i experienced thee
but i was born in 83
shame shame shamefully

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

"It's not reality. Just someone else's sentimentality."

I was conceived in the 1970s though.

[huylen.livejournal.com]

i envie you

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

My mother's womb does not really seem to feature in my memories though.

[huylen.livejournal.com]

unconsciously it does

[djmindwarp.livejournal.com]

heh, at first i thought this was a post from the urban_decay community.
cool shots, thanks for posting 'em.

-

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I bet those places have decayed a lot since 1974. :)

[andyd.livejournal.com]

I used to work in Bradford. That postcard looks towards Jacobs Well - if you get rid of all the green stuff, and put more cars on the roads, it looks exactly the same. Bradford city centre is quite ugly, the rest of it is dirty. It's a shame, it's not a really horrible place to be, just unloved.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

But it looks dreamy in that picture!