Wednesday Rumblings

Sometime ago I wanted to visit Egypt.  The history, tourist sites, heat and fancy foods all attracted.  Now, I canny be bothered going anywhere.  That said, Egypt, seen here from space, is an interesting phenomenon in many ways.  The ancient history, fancy writing, and those huge pyramids let alone the architecture built by pharaoh this and pharaoh that.  All worth viewing.  

Egypt today is once again run by a dictatorial regime, but can you run such a country any other way?  The vast majority of the populace are young, jobs few, conditions not good, and opportunities up and down.   What hope for the future outside of history?  That appears to be all Egypt produces.  There is agriculture, though whether any arrives here in the UK since the absurdity of Brexit I doubt.  There is Natural Gas, coal and oil, but the poor do not benefit, as 'trickle down' works in Egypt as well as it works anywhere else.  Some very rich Egyptians as well as very poor ones.

Now Islamic, once a powerhouse of Christianity with only vestiges left, and the Coptic Christians, going back many centuries, suffer needless abuse by Islam.  

Egypt guards the Suez canal, a wealth creator if ever there was one, and surely one of the most important waterways in the world?  We saw recently how one ship blocked the canal for a few days and disrupted China's economy by ding so!  

Egypt is a powerful nation in the region, a very large army which keeps itself above the rest.  Always ready to take over government when called upon, and even when not called!  

Egypt is well worth a guided tour if you can keep the hawkers away.

Tunbridge Wells Train Station. Photographer Neil Nevinson, 1950s.

Why is it that pictures like this, taken in the 1950s can be so simple yet so good?  If I try to take this picture it will be very different.  OK, the camera and lens will make a difference, but even so the fact that it is dated, black & white, and the outfits also of a differing age all present a view that varies from anything we can capture today.  

Adverts ought to have a special rate of tax added to them.  The more deceitful they are the higher the tax!  Take this one, three flimsy pathetic non foods, add a few pieces of rounded cardboard and wow, something worth looking at!  All lies!  And apart from what is in the meat, what is the cheese made out off?  We will not ask about the bun.

I got an email regarding the Gas today.  Like the recent Electric one it was forcing a new tariff upon me, a more expensive one, to save me when costs rise soon, while celebrating costs coming down now.  I smell a rat.  Indeed I went for the change, is there an alternative?  I checked the increases, all the while noting prices are falling yet my costs rise.  If the Labour Party was a Labour Party it would be bringing this nonsense to an end, but they will not.  It is clear that this Labour Party is for the  business word, thon billionaire who started 'Phones4U' (if that is the correct name) is now donating to Labour because they are for business instead of the workers.  A true conservative party!  

We have been taken over by a right wing coup, big business, often in the USA or Saudi have made use of the mess we are in to force the Farage's upon us, divide the nation, give us Brexit and now Freeports and SEZs.  Prices will rise, wages stagnate, more social problems lie ahead under Labour.  This may not affect Scotland so much but now we know how the SNP has not got independence in sight, in spite of the latest manifesto.  Deviants and weirdo's may be OK under the SNP but independence is far from important.  The middle class Scot shows his comfort lies in Westminster. 

Saturday Slop

 

Surely this is what women were made for?

I had to iron today, a Saturday at that, as I found shirts for tomorrow were running out.  I managed three before I gave up.  How can anyone expect a man in my condition, (Lazy, idle, slob) to work so hard in such heat?  Not only this but my dinner war burning also thereby increasing the warmth in the room.

I noticed an advert saying 'Shirts Ironed,' and looked closer, £20 each!  That is more than they cost!  What a rip-off.  I winder if I can persuade the 12 year old round the corner to do them all for £20?  She needs the money doesn't she...?

With the 'Leadership Debate' still ongoing it is nice to see those Tories who wish one or another to win actually getting bored with the whole thing.  Every channel has a session with them, I ignore them all, we know what they are saying, and boredom, not excitement is the result.  Sunak will introduce private cities, crime and corruption, Truss will introduce lies, corruption and money for the rich, while standing on opposition, and Labour fall asleep, like the rest of us.  None of these people care or understand the country.  The fact that they don't care is more important.  What matters is their people, they ones paying for them, get what they want, the public can go hang.  The unspoken agreement found after the war that change must come, and change for the better, has long since died.  The 2010 Conservative government saw that off, Boris has brought Victorian days back to us all, and his people want him to return.

I like this.  This is an example of the clever advertising I have seen recently.  Another on Twitter came from Specsavers.   No cameras are allowed in UK courtrooms but 'artists impressions' are.  A picture of one from the two celeb slappers arguing showed a poor representation of one of the woman.  Specsavers used this picture calling for the artist to 'Pop in and visit us.'  Very clever.  We need more like this.

The Magazine Contents

 

The post thudded onto the dingy mat late this morning. I raced downstairs to collect whatever vitaly important epistles were awaiting me.  Instead there was a single plastic bag containing a magazine, or so I thought.  Upstairs in my high quality shanty I opened the plastic, piled it onto the recycle pile and began to sort the mass of adverts accompanying the magazine.  

All wanted money.

Most were charities.

All get dumped.

 

"Do I think Leprosy is a thing of the past?"  No! It is regretable, recycled.

'Dignity in Dying.'  'Please donate so we can arrange to remove that aged relative from you.  They will be pleased, their pain ended, their cash in your account.  We supply our own pillows.' 

'Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability.'  "Please support..."  If you are a 'Royal Hospital,' can I suggest you ask Her Majesty to stick her hand in her fat purse and provide a few million to keep her citizens well looked after?  She can take it from one of her slobby sons.

"Doctors Without Borders."  Indeed a trusted, well respected charity.  The middle classes can pay.

'Womankind Worldwide.'  Again, ask the women middle classes that are always shouting about what they want to decide to make a donation!

'Emmaus UK.'  Too late, I help my friend who works amongst such homeless.

'Rotary International.'  Ask your friend of business, Rees-Mogg for help.

 

All these in one mag?  How much do they think people can afford?  Seven charitable adverts, though 'Dignity' is no charity, and how can anyone caring enough to care choose which to help?  I am more choosy where I put money these days, and would check out each one, especially the 'Royal Hospital,' with no Royal cash.

However, it does not stop there, I am offered "One of the best hearing aids in the world." Very tempted as my hearing has endured too much AC/DC for its  own good.  However, with gay abandon it goes on the recycle pile also.  

"The Lady."  Not sure this is aimed at myself.

Also a Private Health plan is offered.  Not suitable for one who worked in the NHS when it was a proper NHS!  It still continues.

A thin glossy magazine falls out offering a huge range of expensive but Historical items. "Museum Selection."  Expensive tat with a Historical edge.  Binned.

'PostScript,'  The thinner still glossy magazine offering second-hand books at cheap (they say) prices.

 

By the time I have sorted out the charity drops, the sales bumf and scanned the two skinny selling magazines I have no time to read the actual Magazine!  Ah well, it sits in the loo usually anyway.  I will get round to it soon.  

OOPS!  I almost forgot, an offer for a cheap magazine "The Week."  Which, if memory serves me right, and I may be wrong here, is a right-wing mag which offers independent and unbiased information.

Hmmm...  

The Oldie Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

Advertising Brexit Success

 

 

Browsing the 'Daily Mail' on my expensive (for me) mobile phone I was irked by the constant adverts at the bottom of the page as well as the large ads in between each and every story.  The 'Mail' has always included 'advertorials' on the page as it likes to make money and is happy to lie to the readers.  Such subliminal advertising is something I abhor and wish it would cease.  It is always possible to be caught out by such sleekie behaviour and end up losing money, and that would never do.  

The items I read in the 'Mail' were little different from what I used to read in years past, the schools have problems, blame the teacher unions, shock, horror naked woman story, 18 pictures inside, Boris fumbling but avoid the issue (the editor does not like Boris but canny say so as his readers do), and an item on healthy eating, if you are rich enough and can find such things in the supermarket as Brexit has stopped them arriving here.  I could not go on, finding something worth reading bar football in the media is very difficult.  I have become quite intrested in the 'Byline Times' however, not an easy read, they use lots of words, but it employs journalists for the most part.  Worth a try even when you disagree with them.

New European PA

 

The success of Brexit has been revealed in supermarkets everywhere.  No veg!  The Northern Ireland Tesco had to dump oranges as by the time the delivery got through the paperwork the goods were days old.  All went into the skip!  I made a mistake last time I was in Sainsburys, I did not buy all the tinned veg I could carry, that may all be gone by now.  Empty shelves, angry fishermen, angry farmers, and Bumbling Boris not knowing what to do about the virus, it all adds up to another year of Brexit suffering ahead.  If you have a garden grow your own.  I might start planting potatoes in the park opposite.

 

Adverts, Census, Maps and Research

BTSport featured an appalling mushy advert the other day featuring a black girl and her mother preparing for her wedding.  The items required, the dress, the weeping mother all were used to sell whatever the product was.  Sadly I had my head over a bucket while watching this but did manage to note that as mum (no dad I notice was this an attack on the descendants of those West Indian men who live in London) as mum walked daughter down the aisle and presented her there the camera changed position to reveal the husband, a handsome white male!  
Have you noticed that in the UK adverts may feature black males with white wives or white males with black girls but never do we see two blacks together, why is this?  An advert for some food product some years ago featured a very happy black family and ran for a while, and I have a faint memory of an Asian family of some sort featuring also but these are rare.  I know that nobody uses gays to sell products because this stops people buying the product but surely black couples do not have the same effect do they?  

     
I had a great deal of research to do this weekend, it wasn't really a great deal but I kept putting it off and now it requires some work before Tuesday, and I have done little.  One reason was the census!  You see on ancestry it is possible to look at the census returns for the town since 1841.  Therefore numpty here began to search these, downloading lots of them for research later, in the hope of finding people who lived in this building in times past.  Naturally it failed!  
For a start the numbers either do not run as now or they do not exist at all.  This is not unusual as many houses then had names, however most people rented their homes and numbers are seen on some of the census returns, it is that these numbers are 'odd' numbers and today the numbers are 'even' numbers on this side of the street.  I wonder if some cooncil worker in the big office would have details of these?  I must ask around the people that know these things, if the do know these things that is.  
On the latest census returns the numbers go up to 96, with is interesting as I look for 98 next door.  However that does not appear and 92 - 96 does not fit with the housing as it stands just now, some building work has been undergone I note from old maps but in what way does this affect the numbers.  The next number I come to is helpfully 110, which does not exist any longer having long since become a Sainsburys petrol station.  No help to me in any way.
The older census either has no or odd numbers or is somewhat mixed up in the way it lists the homes.  Names are given which sometimes helps, 'Baptist Minister indicates the Manse that once stood up the road (Knocked down by the Luftwaffe in 1941), and 'Mount House Lodge' also indicates a house on the maps from 1875, the oldest available.  

The other problem I find is the need to check 'Old Maps' when doing this as I get involved in the maps.  It is invariably interesting to note the changes, not always noticeable at first, between the town today and how it was laid out in the past.  Obviously maps do not indicate the lack of pavements, unmade or 'rough' roads, or the state of the buildings marked on the maps, then we have to seek out old photographs to compare with what the maps reveal.  Luckily I was too lazy to start searching through photographs yesterday or today.  However just looking at the first map I bought when I came to this town twenty one years ago, then around 30,000 persons, and noting how it has grown with housing estates filling in what once was fields and offering some 40,000 persons to annoy me today.  Each week small corners are filled in and a block raised her and there to really annoy the postman who is expected to deliver there but allowed no more time in doing so.    
All in all the time spent perusing a map, and an ageing won at that, is never wasted in my view.  There is always old industrial sites to note, now housing though I suspect many living there have little idea of what lies in the ground beneath them, old railway lines, buildings that were there soon after the Normans built them and remain solid still, public houses that once filled with men from the industry and are now blocks for those 'over fifty' and oak trees that stood for several hundred years in the middle of the road that have been sacrificed for the motor car, so many interesting changes.
Of course I may just be weird...

The 11th....

The BBC managed to ensure the Armistice Day was commemorated well by covering the Lord Mayor of London's Parade.  This live event features many representatives of London and elsewhere marching through the City of London, a good day out for all - if the rain stays away.
Today it began with the Last Post and the two minutes silence.  This was fitting and as always many soldiers, sailors and airmen are found marching in this parade.  I wonder how many others commemorated this two minutes elsewhere on this busy Saturday morning?

Life continues elsewhere and TV offered me the first Christmas advert of the year.  I avoid TV most of the time, I avoid adverts constantly, unfortunately I saw this one. 
My verdict?
"Puke"

Cute!

That advert, like these others, seems fine to me.  

Surely everyone would agree? 

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Christmas Adverts

It takes a while before I find a TV programme worth watching and when I do it is interrupted by adverts.  Now the adverts are all Christmas themed.  That is snow is seen falling, brightly dressed numpties smile stupidly while throwing money at shops, sleigh bells adorn reindeer (often seen around these parts) and tinsel and Christmas trees abound.  I cannot tell of my joy at such scenes, especially as they were recorded in March!  Bah! 

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Brain Dead Today, so

...here is an old golden advert!

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How to Word an Advert

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I Couldn't Possibly Comment...

More Here

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Join the Navy?

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The Power of Advertising

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A post by  a pretty American lass reminded me of a programme on telly a few months ago. It revealed the way to make something sell, even though we all obtain the same substance almost free daily. It concerned the rise of bottled water, in spite of the stuff coming into most folks homes by a tap! 

Since it was discovered that foul water brings disease such as Cholera in its wake the supply of clean water has become important in the UK and elsewhere. Today water flows (at a high price thanks to the stupidity of privatising peoples needs) freely into every house. Clean, safe water, doctored to preserve the purity at the pumping stations and keeping the nation clean, healthy and thirst free. Who can complain about this? No-one, it is just not possible to whine about something so important coming direct into the home. Of course natural resources differ. In Edinburgh the water is 'soft.' This gives a lovely 'feel' to the water, an improved 'taste,' and when thirsty nothing 'tastes' better than cool water. In some areas, such as the south, water is hard and leaves a 'limescale' deposit around the sinks and inside kettles and the like. While harmless it is an irritation and the water tastes somewhat 'dull' in comparison with 'soft' water.

This is where advertising men saw their chance. Knowing that the rich 'trendy' set are always on the look out for expensive 'one-upmanship' opportunities, those given the job of selling 'Perrier' water in the eighties went to work. By suggesting sparkling water that arose 'deep in the earth' was healthier than the stuff coming out of the tap, by including sexy women and of course an expensive price, the adverts touched something in the 'Yuppy' mentality of the time. Soon those bulbous green bottles were everywhere, and within moments dozens of others appeared in the shops. Today this is a multi million business.  From large enterprises to small a business is to be gained. One man found a disused well in the back garden of his new house and produces thousands of bottles, at high price, for five star hotels in Scotland! Straight forward 'water' in plastic bottles flew of the shelves at high prices as customers wished either to be seen with the right kind of water or fell for the idea that water filtered by a mountain was cleaner than that filtered by Fred Bloggs at the pumping station. Much later it was revealed that more bacteria is found in the plastic bottled water, of all kinds, and that tap water was healthier!  Facts of course do not end beliefs! The bottles still fill many shelves in the supermarkets, and price is no object to the daft ones who 'prefer it' because of 'health' or 'society' reasons.

I buy cheap sparkling water, and clearly not to impress the society around me!  This is because I looked at what is contained in the average soft drink, available at high price in the shops. Whether Pepsi, Coke or any of the dozens of other available they all contain at least eight spoonfuls of sugar and various other stuff, some of which I am not willing to trust. I decided to buy cheap carbonated water to provide for a 'fizzy' drink.  The stuff available in the shops costs from 40pence to over a pound if you are daft enough to pay for it. I pay 17 pence for the big Tesco bottle shown. Mix it with tap water and it is fine to drink, less harmful than canned drinks and with no additives bar the bubbles, and as I drink a lot of water these days it is better than the canned stuff.  When out and about during these hot summer days, yes there was one recently, buying a plastic bottle of water does make some sense. However paying £1:45 at a railway station appears to me to be just a bit dear myself!  OK if desperate but the word 'rip-off' goes through my mind here. People will not believe me when I tell them it is advertising, and the labels, which make them pay through the nose for water available from their taps. Advertising speaks to something within us, usually greed, 'keeping up with the Jones's' or a deep psychological need recognised by the advertising people. Such folks make better psychologists than psychologists! 

This is a (US) sample of the hype from the eighties, although all of my female readers will not be old enough to remember this sort of thing.

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Hmmmm, the French do things differently of course.....

                                   



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ADVERTS!

I'm sick of TV adverts! I turn on Sky Sports News to be greeted with "When we come back...." so I switch to the Sky News and find those bloody Meerkats selling insurance! Now I note that these creatures have been a success, I suspect the kids are thrilled and daddy has to buy insurance because of this, just like that fat mutt adverting the Churchill rip off insurance. I turn to any other channel and find all have adverts on at the same time! No peace for the wicked, no freedom from the constant repetition on all channels of the same bloody adverts!!!! Insurance, dominates, and finance is not far behind! Several over cheery women sell 'Vanish,' promising to remove all stains from your laundry, don't buy it, this is a fraud! It never worked on my Royal Mail shirts! A vast number of cars whizz across the screen promising male watchers an image they cannot resist. You will note the actual performance of the car is rarely mentioned in such ads, all is image.

Not only are they always on, they last for four minutes (it feels like more) on all channels. Any programme going for eight minutes now halts for "A short break." No it isn't, it's a long break with the same bloody adverts we saw last time and the time before and the time before that! One more image of a clown wearing an oversized light bulb on his head desperate for a cheap loan and I will swap the light for an axe! (I have one spare!) One children's charity showed an ad featuring a small boy, three times in every break. This advert worked. The little boy is now buried in my back garden! The ad is not shown now.

So let's leave TV and the one hour programme that comprises four, yer four, four minute ad breaks, an intro that takes two minutes plus, and four "When we come backs..." which take two minutes each. Add to this the "Welcome back, coming up, ..." which takes another minute and a half, and we are left with twenty eight minutes of programme each hour! Only Murdoch could think this worth while! Many of his readers/viewers probably don't notice how little they actually watch, and much repeated from earlier in the day! Let's move to the radio. Hold on, three minutes of adverts, mostly for local companies, before the news comes on. Blasted Meerkats are there again also and that 'Direct Line' one! Enough, turn to something else, a talk show, even they are stopping off for a 'break!' Right, BBC it is. Guess what, they are shoving a trailer for an upcoming programme down our throat. They advertise themselves, even on the 'World Service' and 'Radio 3!'

Right that's it! If you want me I will be at the zoo. I'm going hunting for Meerkats!

TV Car Adverts

Why are TV adverts for cars so bad? They are all about image, nothing at all about performance, and none of them make any sense to me! Who buys a car because of the TV ad? What small minded cretin is convinced any car is for them when it is advertised driving across a desert, or in the fantasy world of the Audi advert? What does this do for them? One featured cars attached to balloons floating into the sky. Why? What cobblers! Just give us the details and....oh, of course, if we know all about them we would move on and buy a better car wouldn't we? So instead of facts we get 'image!' This car makes you look 'top dog' instead of a nobody! This car makes you look attractive, powerful, strong or manly, instead of the wimp like loser you really are. These adverts are aimed at men, and I thought women were daft!

Blogcatalog Friends

The number of 'Friends' I have made on Blogcatalog' never fails to amaze me! I don't refer to those who I have added to my 'Friends' list, nor those excellent folk who waste their valuable time regularly reading my scribbles, I of course allude to those who call me 'Friend,' yet never read the blog! There have been several lately. Almost all of them selling something, or attempting to make money through me. Wrong idea there pal!

There is nothing more enjoyable to find an intelligent reader has taken delight in my mentally unstable viewpoint, and been so keen that they have decided to call again, leave a comment and add me to their 'Friends' list. Pretty young girls always welcomed. This always leaves a sense of achievement with me, and a doubt as to their sanity also. So far no-one has failed the sanity test, which is good. It is a simple test, if they walk the streets with out wearing a straightjacket they are fine in my book. (Not counting Glaswegians obviously!)

However it appears to me far too many do not read the blog, if they do they don't like it, nor understand it, yet they add me as 'Friend,' and ask, almost demand, that I do the same. Those who leave a message seem more interested in gathering numbers rather than reading blogs. There are a huge amount of blogs in the world and the best way to meet them is through 'Blogcatalog' in my view, but if folks just want to 'get rich quick' by telling me how to 'get rich quick,' they are wasting their time and mine! I want to read something interesting, humorous, or worthwhile, and while I want to have each reader click the 'Ads' to make me rich I will not demand this, nor is this the reason for the blog. I must say these folk are beginning to annoy me now. Everyday someone who just wishes to inform me of their sales technique leaves a message, quickly deleted, and I become one of their two hundred Friends.' How lucky am I? I add 'Friends' because their blog is 'top rated,' by me. I add 'Favourites' because there are only ten spaces in the screen I can see. All are worthwhile, all ought to be read, and all need to click my 'AdSense Ads,' to make me rich, but if they do not I am happy if they just feel inclined to read this, let's face it, sad empty bawling they find here.

But please, don't 'add ' me just because you wish to get rich!

It's Driving me to Drink!

Every time I switch a radio or TV on I find adverts!
Now I have turned the thing on for the football and they go off for 'a break.' ITV spend more time on 'Breaks' than they do football. In the few minutes the programme has run nothing sensible has been said, and what was was uttered at pace because a 'break' was coming up!

I put 'Talksport' on this morning, a Rupert Murdoch station which gives us all the intellect a fan of Jeremy Kyle requires, and was confronted by adverts. Adverts which assume you are male, white, drink too much, waste money on the horses and are a 'white van driver!' I tuned into the World Service of the BBC because it gives good news coverage, and it was some boring science talk. I returned to 'Talksport' and it was still adverts, so I went to Radio 5. Here they were, once again, droning on about the house price situation. Off to Radio 4 - House prices, on to Radio 3 and it was opera! I went back to 'Talksport' and found they had another break!

Liverpool and Chelsea have just walked out onto the pitch. ITV have gone off for adverts! I think I need 'textspeak' for what I want to say now.......

And I don't have a bottle of 'Black Bottle.' Just Tesco's 17p fizzy water.
Rejoice rejoice.....

Adverts

While wondering what illegal drug some young flash Harry in the advertising office had been shoving up his nose I watched his latest car ad on the telly. Car ads, as you know, tell you nothing about the car, but lots about the small willy possessed by the man who is looking to buy! The car is hoisted on balloons, or melts like mercury across the screen, maybe it drives across the Nevada desert and is driven by handsome (white) well heeled males who are going places. Soon hopefully! The cretin, pushing his baseball cap to the back of his head and tossing a banana peel out the window, has watched those ads and now while trudging along in the fog at six miles an hour, alongside the many similar oiks, dreams he is in Nevada somewhere. The advert has satisfied his mind and taken from him all reality.

It was ever thus! Adverts are not there to tell the truth, they of course only want to sell! This Guinness one certainly did, the slogan supposedly coming from a man who answered the question,"Why do you drink it?" With the answer "Because it is good for me." His wife, seeing him carried home and dumped in the front garden, had other ideas I bet, especially when his liver gave out and he passed on leaving her "£7.10 shillings in insurance money. (If that happened of course....) In recent years the ad was dropped because the law was tightened up, and not before time, to end much of the deceit practised on us by advertisers. There being no proof that Guinness actually is 'Good for you,' the slogan was dropped. A shame as no-one really believed that anyway. Well apart form several million Irish drunks of course. Today Guinness ads make no sense whatsoever as they strive to replace the old generation of drinkers with a new younger set more used to the feeble lager and invented alcohol products designed by Mammon loving brewers and sought after by dunderheads.

I like the old poster adverts, they always appear to me to be better drawn and more enticing, even if I remain unconvinced about spending my coppers on the product offered. We think we are not motivated by them yet, years later, we remember the slogans or tunes that accompany telly adverts, and the posters remain deep within our memory.

"You'll wonder where the yellow went,
when you brush your teeth with 'Pepsodent."

I often wondered where 'Pepsodent' went myself. Nobody as ever told me. The sound has remained with me, and we did buy the stuff when I was still finding difficulty in beginning the joined up writing at school. Mind you I was 34 by then.

The change in the law, I think I am right in saying it was the '196o Trades Description Act,' but I am willing to be proved wrong stopped many a false advert from ripping of the gullible. One trick was to advertise "Cup Final Seats," in the classifieds, and folk would send of their ten shillings expecting a ticket for the Cup Final, a great day out for the Englishman in the fifties. They would be somewhat nonplussed to receive a small stool with "Cup Final," written on it. But it was a 'Cup Final Seat'! For a year or two I worked (Ha!) for the Advertising Standards Authority, an organisation that to some extent reduces the misleading nature of many adverts but is in truth is a waste of space. Complaints arrive once the ads have appeared, and by the time an adjudication is arrived at the ad has run its course, profits have been made and a mere warning is issued. In theory individuals can be barred from placing adverts but the organisation does not go to court to fight such people, leaving that up to the Trading Standards folk, so it is in many respects useless! Most of the girls were nice mind you, young, attractive and intelligent, just how I like them! However, possibly a point connected to their intelligence, they did not like me as I am! How insensitive of them I say. I do dislike it when young lassies refer to me as 'Dad' or 'Uncle!'