Birthday cards

There are certain reliable images that you can have for birthday cards. Cake is good, so is booze, and some kind of gaily wrapped prezzie is always an acceptable image.

Then you get the cards that break down on gender lines, or rather gender stereotypes.

For women, shoes feature a lot. As do those amusing cards featuring either a black and white photograph of some 1950’s housewife and an amusing caption along the lines of ‘Daphne knew she was growing old when she only got off her tits on ketamin at the weekend’, or a cartoon of a woman and a caption about binge drinking or binge chocolate eating being more fun than anal.

For men, sports are where you can traditionally turn. Vintage golfing images or images of footballers in long shorts and longer moustaches from the days when they were happy to play for half a crown a week and people thought ‘superinjunction’ was something to do with Crewe railway station.


Vintage is still big business, taking a vintage travel poster and slapping ‘happy birthday’ on it usually works a treat, because men, by and large, are genetically programmed to like trains, boats and young women in flimsy dresses drinking alcohol in foreign parts far removed from the restraining influences of vicars, aunts or anyone who knows your reputation.

Browsing the racks there’s another sort of card that appears as a genre – the image of a sports car racing the steam train. The sports car is usually in the foreground (winning the race?) with the train in the background.


This is the perfect card for a gent. He may not be getting a train set or a sports car for his birthday, but he’s got a card that shows both and he can imagine himself behind the wheel or on the footplate, as his temperament dictates.


Quick quiz – if you were presented with such a card, would you consider yourself to be driving the car, driving the train or as a passenger on the train? And what about the person who gave you the card?

It depends to an extent on the illustration. Is one alone in the car or does one have a lady companion? Does the train look like it might have a really good restaurant service?

a) I am driving the car. I have personal freedom and I like the smell of petrol. And I don’t mind paying lots for it. And I quite like petrol garage sandwiches. And porn.

b) I am a passenger on the train. I appreciate the idea of swishing through the English countryside knowing that, according to all the books I have read and films I have seen, it is only a matter of time before I am embroiled in a murder or an act of espionage. I will use that time to drink an entire bottle of claret.

c) I am the driver of the train. I am not on strike because it is a steam train and I am an enthusiast. I am also not on strike because as well as coal I am feeding into the boiler any evidence from the bank raid it took to fund the restoration of the steam engine.

d) This is the one I always go for. I am racing in the car to intercept the train at the next station, its final stop before it crosses the border. On boarding the train I will take my seat in the restaurant car and smile to myself as my car, now driven by a close associate who just happens to be a world class racing driver, sets off with some vile foreign agents in pursuit. The secret plans are safely in my possession, the wine list looks acceptable, my sleeping berth is a double and a woman who looks JUST like Gillian Anderson has just taken the last available seat in the restaurant car, opposite me.

I concentrate more on the idea that the woman looks JUST like Gillian Anderson rather than the fact that the seat opposite me was the last one to be taken.

Of course, thanks to a section of society that likes to take things that are great, and turn them into things that are shit, the last restaurant car on a regular service is now a thing of the past. Apparently first class passengers will now be served ‘airline means’ at their seats. I can see how this is cheaper than running a kitchen and providing tablecloths, service, china and civilisation, but it was interesting to note how everyone pronounced the words ‘airline meal’ in a certain tone.

I am sure that in business class and first class travel on certain airlines it’s possible to still get a decent meal with china and food you could identify. Personally, I love the idea that when you fly you get little trays of plastic with food in them, plastic cutlery, and sachets of salt and sachets of sauce. It adds to the novelty and, to be fair, nobody expects a working kitchen at 35,000 feet. But a train, a train is different, on a train the expectation rather than the exception should be a dining car.

(It’s got to be time to fight back and here’s how. First Class picnics. OK, you know your flight or your train or whatever. Waiting for you at check in or the ticket barrier will be your First Class picnic. A box of delights that will contain all you need to make your journey a transport of delight. For trains you get a small linen tablecloth designed to fit across your table or seatback tray, along with china and cutlery. For aeroplanes the only concession is plastic cutlery and that your bottle of decent red comes in the form of a dozen or so tiny plastic sachets that you can take through security.)

What the card does not show is the motor car racing a steam train across a level crossing – or trying to. A few tonnes of athletic metal and flesh vs several hundred tonnes of flaming, smoke-breathing steam train and heritage? Inside illustration: a single wheel, on fire, rolling down the road.