AN OLD BIRMINGHAM POSTCARD: 'THERE'S ALWAYS A PLACE FOR YOU AT PERRY BARR...'

There’s Always A Place For You At Perry Barr…

Hovering at the dining-room door

I detected just one free space

At the covered table in my new lodgings

And the horror must have shown on my face…

The wife to my left was smartly attired in green,

Her sideways glance somehow reassuring;

Her uniformed husband though grinned like a lunatic,

His cheesy expression I did not find alluring…

The boy to his left behaved like a scallywag,

Askew in his chair he niggled his sister in pink;

My seat was between her and the other young lad,

Of Little Lord Fauntleroy, he made me think…

The family opposite, lodgers without doubt,

Maybe smiled at me, though it seemed like they leered;

Both the baby and the young girl in a pinafore 

Each took after one of the parents, it appeared…

The inane smiles were worrying, the girl was thin like her dad,

The bald baby would no doubt grow up like its mum;

But the moustachioed father displayed fear in his eyes,

A conscientious objector? Or in his wife’s presence struck dumb?

This voluminous woman, this obese Russian shot-putter,

Powerful, frightening, with a bun in her hair,

Glared at me, for I was meant to sit right opposite

Upon the only vacant, plain wooden chair…  

Had she been a prison warder in a Siberian jail?

Had the shivering insurance clerk been coerced into the marriage?

Although ‘there’s always a place for you at Perry Barr’,

 I escaped with haste and distaste via horse and carriage… 

Pete Ray 

Another postcard, used in 1918, drawn by artist Reg Maurice and published by Regent. 

The soldier had probably returned safely from the Great War in 1918 but his grin looks like he had been advertising toothpaste on billboards.

The woman lodger is hilariously drawn and her spouse looks terrified.

Although the soldier’s wife in green looks pleasant enough and the meat joint appears tasty, that single chair looks like it might just be booby-trapped…

Maybe…

This postcard again comes from Mary B Harding’s book, ‘Comic and Novelty Postcards of Birmingham’, published by Maxam.