Vintage Warm Weather Refreshment. Temperatures are suddenly on the rise and we're having a mini May heatwave. After a hard day on the lathe or coalface I'm sure we could all do with some refrigerated treats like those pictured above.

No Modernist Houses here. After morning Mass I spent my Bank Holiday Monday tootling around the local vicinity in search of sights which might run counter to our near total national submission to consumer lusts.

Near a Morrison's Supermarket which was full to the gunnels with sallow and obese drone youths taking advantage of the weekend's special offer on cases of Stella was this cluster of empty flat-roofed houses obviously ready for demolition. Walking around these silent reminders of faith in the square and the functional at Doxford Park near Sunderland I wondered what such nostalgically appealing International Style boxes might soon be replaced with. Nearby was a slick sign announcing "another exciting new development from (forgotten corporate name)". I should have known, more expensive and cramped houses to enslave mortgaged couples in atomised isolation, their only consolation being they are at last on the "property ladder"!

Rural hand-painted sign. I've driven past this very nice amateur sign nearly every day in the past few months and have grown to love its untutored gloss-paint brushiness. Pointers to its unprofessional charms are (a) closeness of lettering to border (b) confusion between upper and lower case letters, note the dotted 'i' and (c) random application of a serif on the letter U.

This formica beauty is located between Leamside and Great Lumley, Co. Durham.

Still Open For Business. These photos of severely decaying retail premises come from a visit I made yesterday to Stanley, Co. Durham. I was there for Saturday morning Confession at St. Joseph's, a magnificent 19th Century church with a beautifully decorated and dark Lady Chapel which is lit only by the small number of votive candles the elderly faithful choose to pay their 20p for. Parish Priest Father Joe Park is a kindly old priest with not many teeth and whose long winter clerical cloak shows under the velvet confessional curtain hem.

Despite these shops crumbling state they somehow remain open and stand for me as hopeful counter-cultural beacons amid the chain-store strangulation of our land. First pictured is an independent Estate Agent with nailed on plastic letters on its flaking fascia which must have come from a DIY store circa 1976. Please note the hand-written "Can't Get A Mortgage?" notice which you'd never see in a high-street Halifax branch. Next shop is Sandra's Ladies Hairdressers, a shop so unkempt I was certain it must be closed until I watched a head-scarved old lady walk inside and then saw a flourescent light flicker on through its exceedingly grubby net curtains. Last photo is of Beamish Street's garage with a unique weed-filled bathtub as it's welcoming feature.

Modernist Sunday School Art. Found these lovely vintage images on a Norwegian children's book illustration site. This style of popular religious artwork seems to have first appeared in the 60s and is "modernist" only in that it borrows the flat picture-plane, unmodulated bright colours and schematic black-outline representation from mid-20th Century painting. There are also echoes here of Hanna Barbera style cartoons. Being roughly 60 years old this generically modern graphic mode is now quite dated but has also acquired a luscious retro patina. Many parish churches still employ the style in their bulletins and decorations in a bid to communicate in a direct graphic manner. Even my own RC church uses liturgical wall-hangings in exactly the same simplified Matisse meets Derain manner.

New Testament subjects depicted above are the Annunciation, the Last Supper and the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. I love the way the Angel Gabriel is represented as a strictly linear outline rather than the traditional flowing and feather-winged messenger of the Immaculate Conception.

Ladybird Book Art. One recent hardback volume which has been fascinating my reading specs since the beginning of this year has been Boys and Girls, A Ladybird Book of Childhood. This hefty collection of stunning images from the 60s and 70s heyday of Ladybird publishing rises high above the recent glut of UK nostalgia titles like the (admittedly likeable) Jackie, Eagle Comic and Look-In collections which were on every gift-title bookshop stack before the Nativity of Our Lord 2007.

Into late 40s Austerity Britain first appeared Ladybird Children's books, a series of inexpensive hardback volumes. Their small size was dictated by the paper shortage of post-wartime and the modestly sized printing presses of publishers Wills & Hepworth, Loughborough. Their format (virtually unchanged to this day) was a huge success and became most familiar and best-selling in every Woolworths and WH Smith during the 1960s and 1970s.

I've been a collector of classic Ladybirds from this period for about 5 years and willingly admit to pinching some of their iconic imagery for use in my comic and illustration work. Thanks to ebay all but the rarest titles are usually easy and cheap to locate (but I still can't find a decent copy of The Customs Officer!) Their beautiful and painstaking illustrations by artists like John Berry and Harry Wingfield provide an indispensable snapshot of an entirely lost British era and only now are these artists receiving belated recognition. Of course, predictable criticisms have been levelled against Ladybird books: they presented too cosy and middle-class a picture of Britain from that time and one recent Sunday Supplement reviewer of Boys & Girls said Ladybird books failed to illustrate the possible underlying tensions between parents in the happy family unit which is uniformly presented. But I ask you, what child would ever want to happily read about an impending divorce from their self-absorbed and irresponsible Mothers and Fathers?

Top photo shows a few choice Ladybird titles from my collection and the remainder are from the highly recommended Boys & Girls book.

Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat.

A Happy Easter to all !