Forbidden

The picture that came with the obituary in Guardian of Shirley Anne Field caught my eye over breakfast this morning, a still taken from the famous film 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', which I dare say I have seen for myself at some point. With the preview above being turned up by Google Image Search and lifted from reference 1.

While the version offered by the Guardian online as a WEBP file had been significantly cropped.

And with the version offered by the Guardian print being somewhere in between. With the lower contrast bringing out different features of the scene.

One can understand why the print version might have to crop to fit the space available on the page. Not so clear why the online version has to. But then, perhaps there are lots of versions of this particular scene doing the rounds.

The point of all this being that this blast from the past offers all sorts of forbidden attractions. People with fags. Warm beer. An absence of lager. Pork pies on display on the bar. Old fashioned boozer where the barmaid had time to flirt with the customers. 

Regarding which last, I have been reminded by an excursion into Henry James (the short story, Daisy Miller) that 'flirt' was a much more loaded word around 1900 than it is now. Perhaps a time when respectable young ladies were only just coming  out of the closet. From where I associate to Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Mikado', where flirting was, for a while, a capital offence.

PS: I also got Christmas greetings from the people that insure our car. Not something other insurers bother with, at least as far as I can recall. I rather liked it - but I suppose it would soon pall if lots of people did it.

References

Reference 1: https://www.album-online.com/.

Reference 2: https://csis.co.uk/.