Have you heard?

I grew up in a household where to stick any notice in the window was socially unacceptable. People might see it. You will draw attention to the house and people will take the opportunity to look. That is wrong! Your house is personal, not public! And the window is that fine glassy divide between private and social. Don't mess with it.

And my mother was right! Not only do I see this notice in a resident's window, I cross the road to look at it. Recently I started to photograph every one I passed.

Fortunately, in most cases, the residents have positioned these notices in windows with blinds or net curtains screening their house interior. Thank goodness! If I looked like I was photographing the private space beyond the sign - someone's front room - I might get a punch on the nose. Photographing the sign is (just) okay, but not the room. That would breach cultural etiquette!

Thank goodness for those nets, screens, blinds. But I do notice more of these signs appear in houses without front gardens: the front windows directly face the street with no physical buffer - the passer-by can't help but walk past in easy reading proximity. Instead of trying to keep my gaze at a distance, the residents are recognising my proximity and taking advantage of my footfall.

So here is the typical sign: positioned at this transparent junction between passer-by and resident; the junction of private and shared space; the place where personal interest meets social discourse.

These residents might just get away with breaking my mother's rule, because these signs appear to be in the interests of sharing a neighbour's news, interests, and 'lifestyle businesses' with the wider community. These notices invite me to support Church open days, raise money in charity book sales, cheer along local hospital, hospice or school events, relax in yoga groups, share my new parent status in baby and toddler clubs, and give me an offer of respite with child minding. Aren't they just like short narratives into someone's life?

And it's all so very local. None of the events I've seen on my walk today are advertising large-scale or national business (unless you count the Church) and neither do they advertise anything remotely like a special deal in car shops or burger bars.

I see these signs not emphasising commercial transactions (the book sale might be an exception) but posted primarily on behalf of individuals offering services, referencing events run by support groups, and highlighting or expressing interests the resident would like to share.

Of course I hear a counter explanation. Others need to flesh out the argument properly, but it goes something like, 'All households have to become individual profit centres with at least two adults bringing in income, thus accounting for the proliferation of what is basically shop-window advertisements'.

To me, this seems an unnecessarily heavy-weight economic explanation for the proliferation of posters for the Tuesday Toddler Group. ( I also wonder if it's the type of argument that emerges from someone who's never looked after toddlers 24/7 and can't understand how valuable Tuesdays can become.)

I wonder if the signs are mostly put up mainly by women. And I wonder if the majority of these signs are indeed aimed at women with their tendency to offer support with children, toddlers and provide stress reducing yoga.

Perhaps they are also aimed at those who walk routinely back and forward to shops and local services. I have the impression that more of these signs appear on streets radiating from the main town square than elsewhere, taking advantage of the streams of parents (mothers) walking these routes to drop off and pick up children at a nearby primary school.

Similarly, I wonder whether I would need the car to access any event listed, or whether all the events advertised in the windows are in walking distance. If I scrutinised these notices carefully, I might expect them all to reference events in walking distance.

Finally, I also wonder about control over the signage. I noticed, as I returned to photograph a notice I'd seen earlier, that it was already taken down. The event had passed. Elsewhere in this blog I've surveyed Town Notice Boards, and I note their potential issues with access, maintenance, and vandalism. Putting up a notice in your own front window for the date of a book sale is totally under the control of the resident.

But I feel rather happy to see all these notices. They make me feel I am living in a town where people become involved with different social groups. Whether their motives are economic or social, putting up window signage is a way by which people can take control over an agenda and express their personal identities and interests.

I reflect too, that my mother probably had a different way of communicating information with the neighbours.

Today, it can be as speedy as printing off the email attachment and sticking up a notice. I'm looking at the equivalent of leaning over the garden fence to share important tid-bits and find out what's happening, when are things starting, where is it going off, who's involved, and will you come along too?

Inside, Outside

Off I go, keen detective that I am, hunting out my examples of the language practices that form my urban environment, when a set of orderly signage catches my eye.

Interesting! Standard-sized postcard shapes laid out in columns and rows, bordered by a set of window frames the window glass in a mix of frosted and clear panes; the cards are placed deliberately and carefully in an intentional grid. Here are signs facing the street as if laid out in a grand public magazine, each window a double-page spread.

And as I walk closer to see what these inviting pieces of paper hold, I see, on them, there's absolutely nothing. Cards and cards of no text, no graphics, no pictures, no instructions, no injunctions, no prohibitions and no multilingual intrigue. Nothing at all.

Because, of course, I'm standing on the wrong side. I'm the outsider, looking in. These are the windows of the Christian Foundation, a charity established in 1985 by local churches to work across faiths in the community: 'The intention of those from the Christian Community is not to proselytise but to work in ways that express our belief in a God who is passionately concerned for all life and particularly for the communities within which we all live'.

What's the message to me, identified by my street ways, as the outsider to this window-framed signage, the messages, pictures, text and information reserved for those on the inside?

But there, to the right of the door, on the hinge side, is the signage for me, street passer-by, casual looker, tidily kept to one side of the entrance.

If I want to see what signs are written on the other side, for the insiders, we know what I have to do.