Many people on Facebook began with a small group, mainly family and friends, and they would put up pictures taken on a day out, even pictures of their breakfast.
Then you find a friend of a friend who puts up interesting posts and you befriend them and these new friends allow you access to their friends and family and so it grows and you find yourselves with a thousand friends most of them being people you would never normally befriend.
The next move is to join Facebook groups which are based around something you are interested in.
I began with a group interested in old Rhyl (see above: the Rhyl Pavilion in its glory days) which linked me to my childhood and early teens. Then I found the Rhyl Little Theatre group, which brought me back in touch with friends I made from 1963 to 1972. As a bonus they had lots of pictures from productions during that time, including some featuring my favourite amateur actor – ME.
Pictured below: Rhyl Little Theatre production of Macbeth and there I am, bottom right, horned helmet and hand on my sword.
Recently I was alerted to a site based on the Kings Liverpool Regiment which includes the four Liverpool Pals battalions which is the regiment my grandfather, Harry Lloyd, volunteered for in 1914. He is pictured below, front centre, with the pipe
Soon after I was referred to sites about seaside postcards which, in the 1960s, I used to look at on the racks outside the amusement arcades and ice-cream and rock stalls on Rhyl promenade.
Initially the postcard group was good. Enthusiasts would post anything from one to five postcards at a time which mainly highlighted the 50s to 70s boom in saucy seaside postcards.
Postcards in the 20s and 30s were far from saucy and often showed suitably clad holidaymakers parading on a promenade with a message on the lines of: “Having a great time at Clacton” or: “It’s breezy but bright in Brighton”.
It was after the Second World War, late 40s and early 50s, that the postcards began to get saucier and saucier. There had been earlier saucy postcards, especially those of Donald McGill, but they began to push the boundaries in the 50s and eventually some authorities in seaside towns banned the sale of certain cards under the Obscene Publications Act.
In fact they were quite tame compared to postcards and even greetings cards from the 80s onwards.
The cheeky cards of the 60s were more in tune with the “Carry On” films of the time as compared to the mucky movies found in Soho.
Even the “Carry On” films began to outstrip the saucy postcards, especially “Carry on England” and then the disastrous “Carry on Emmanuele” which really left nothing to the imagination.
It’s easy to tell the CERTAIN he is after
The point is the McGill and Bamforth postcards were a bit of fun, the good old double entendre and the slightly smutty comment.
This shift from that cheeky age to the in your face crude humour which followed can also be seen on the saucy seaside postcard sites where people now put up blatantly sexy and sexist images many of which are really so-called humour greetings cards, or even “naughty” postcards with the caption altered to an in-your face unfunny quote which had nothing to do with the artists like McGill who always left something to your imagination.
I am not a prude, I grew up in the 60s after all, but I prefer some things be left to my imagination.
Robin's Nest 