Tickets for Gaberlunzie

Speaking of Gaberlunzie – back in the dim distant past when I worked in the local library, the folk duo Gaberlunzie was due to play a gig at the local community centre and the tickets were on sale at the library. We had all been told to expect members of the public to be coming in to buy tickets.

This was the early 1970s and computers hadn’t arrived at the library, it was all cardboard tickets and card indexes, with everything filed in alphabetical order, I loved it, we were faster than computers. Readers often left their spare library tickets at the library for safe keeping, asking for them when they wanted to borrow something. We just needed their name and address, although most of the time we already knew it.

Unfortunately, my friend was off the day we were told about the Gaberlunzie tickets, so when someone came in and asked her for tickets for Gaberlunzie – she immediately said – What’s the address? Which was followed by a blank look from the woman and gales of laughter from the rest of the library assistants. Ahh simple days, but Gaberlunzie still makes me think of that time.

Something else which makes me nostalgic for those days at the library is this old Smirnoff advert, which apparently wasn’t a success, especially with potential librarians. But I love it, as well as the image, it just shrieks ‘1970s’ – which was supposedly a style-free zone, well so the kids of the 1980s claim. But for me it was a great time for fashion and design. What’s your favourite decade?

old Smirnoff ad