Every little helps . . .

My version of the meeting where those three words were dreamt up for a certain food emporium.

"Morning everyone. So . . . here at Snickett, Rabid and Forelock, we've been given the go-ahead to create the new Turdco logo and, most importantly - a grabbing little phrase that can be used on store bags, shop frontage, ads, etc. Exciting, eh? So . . . Kevin, what're your thoughts?"

"Er, wot?"

"Kevin, get your arse in gear or you'll be on the office furniture catalogue before I can say, leatherette swivel chair."

"Sorry, Guv."

"They want three words . . . Amanda?"

"Why does everyone want three bloody words - like . . . Get Brexit Done . . . or. I'm lovin' it."

"Or, Just do it . . . or, Eat out to Help Out . . .

"Shut up, Kevin - that's five words."

"Oh - yeah. So . . . three words about saving money, or some bullshit."

"That's the idea."

" . . . Spend More, Tossers."

"Kevin! I'm warning you . . ."

"Okay - serious now. Save Money Here."

"Bit boring. Amanda?"

" . . . Broke? Shop Here."

"Nope."

"We Really Care."

"Bit too ingratiating."

"Free Food, Tuesdays."

What? they really doing that?

"Course they're not, Kevin! Look we've got ten minutes before the main honcho arrives for pastries and smarminess. Serious now! - come on! you're usually a bit good at this crap."

"Okay, okay . . . We love You - Grudgingly Accept You, Pay Our Shareholders, Come and Shop, I'ts warm Here, Got Much Soup, Free Use Toilets . . . fuck, it's not working."

"Think of your bonus. . . ." 

"Okay. Right! All Savings Help."

"Err, yeah - not bad. Bit more catchy. Bit more personal. Bit more - we relate to the little person on the street with their everyday scrimping."

"We Relate, Folks."

"Absolutely not! Something with help in it."

"Help at Hand."

"Too Salvation Army."

 ". . . We Help You."

"Boring. Amanda? Come on, come on!"

"Every Bit Helps?"

"Not bad . . . push the envelope."

" . . . What does that actually mean?"

 ". . . I've no idea. Come on!"

"Every Particle Helps. Every . . . Penny, Dime, Thing . . . Saving . . . Little."

"What? that last thing - say it again."

"Little."

"YES! Every little Helps! Bloody brilliant. Done - quick, Kevin, wipe that penis off the whiteboard - tell Doris to get the buns in."

 ". . . Hello, everyone. Please come in . . . Good holiday, Malcolm? Great! . . . Yes, it's gone exceptionally well. We're very pleased with what we've come up with - took quite a time, I must say. A lot more customer surveys than anticipated. Ah, Doris. Coffee all round - your finest of course!

What this post was actually about was 'every little helps' in relation to saving our rapidly degrading planet. My tip for today - tiny, minuscule tip, but might help if everyone were to adopt it and stop buying washing -up sponges. We are guilty of purchasing them for years (gulp) but their lifespan is short and greasy, and no doubt make up a considerable area of landfill each year, or even month/week.

Thanks to my super brother visiting recently and his giving of certain practical, house gifts, we have now adopted the loofah for washing up - pleasantly scratchy and fibrous. Very durable, doesn't get greasy and can go in the washing machine/dishwasher/. Teamed with a scrap of old t-shirt for wiping down as the loofa does leave more water than the trad sponge, it's a perfect kitchen solution. And cheaper. And makes you feel better. What's not to like - oops four words.  

P.S... this morning, I went to get the old sponge I'd kept for cleaning the dark recesses of the oven and discovered a tiny plant growing on it - proof of the stuff that must live in these little rectangles.

 

Don't worry, folks! I will replant the seedling in the garden.

    https://www.loofco.co.uk/products/washing-up-pad. 

Just in case I was in any doubt of the seriously stupid direction our civilisation is headed in...

I utterly found confirmation of it while visiting our local supermarket this morning.

Positioned within the aisle, or rather, entire island given over to Coke and all its associated fizzing death beverages, there was this. A sort of DJ booth without music at which, apparently, you could have your own personalised plastic Coke cup made while you waited - and, of course, having spent the required amount on aforementioned drink.

It was only 9:00 am and as the plastic cup craftsperson was absent until 10:00 I couldn't hang around to see the action - I had a dog to walk. Rather a shame as I was curious to see if the marketing outfit had seriously researched their demographic for this particular hanger of nightmarish goods of which probably 85% are completely unneeded. Most of the clientele appeared to be over fifty, wheeling trolleys about and gently moaning about the fact that certain types of cheese were missing. It seemed unlikely they would queuing up at 10 o'clock for their red plastic cup to pack in their rucksack for the next music festival. 

What was I doing in there? you may ask being so obviously suspicious of all grande surface. Well, I do like the 'anti gaspi (no waste) section - stuff going out of date, unsold as its a bit weird etc; and there are a few luxuries to be bought from time to time - a certain type of square fat cakes that our growing colony of blue tits adore, a bar of soap for B and B guests, root ginger, etc . . .

I did feel an urge to glue myself to the plastic and cardboard Coke construction, or perhaps attack it with a rather aggressive spade I'd noticed in the garden section called a 'root slayer' but then the dog would be stuck in the car and the B and B room wouldn't get prepared and Mark needed the car. Maybe I'll go back another day. It'll be interesting to see how long the thing stays there before being replaced with Christmas crap or whatever the next consumerist money trap device that one of our planet's mega-corps have thought up.

Oh, come all ye gullible

It's that time of year again when a worryingly large portion of all supermarkets are filled with an invasion of festive chocolate. Our local food hanger, Super U, has positioned it all fairly close to the entrance, but with a walkway first through stacks of Christmas mugs, Christmas underwear, Christmas cupcake-making sets, Christmas celebrity recipe books, Christmas air freshener, etc, etc; an assault course of future landfill before you can get anywhere near the serious stuff like wine and tinned tomatoes. 

This year, my least favourite form of chocolate, Ferrero Rocher (many times blogged about) has claimed centre stage with a scarily messianic alter-piece of gold cardboard and dizzyingly tall arrangement of their knobbly, uninteresting fodder. The structure towers above all other competitors with the poetic phrase: Live the magic of Christmas. I will, thanks! but in my own way - a few real chocolates, log fire, nice lunch and maybe a nip into the local church to remember what this bloated, tinsel-y consumer-fest is supposed to be about. 

The wonderment of inexplicable things

I may have blogged about this before but after an episode yesterday I was inspired to write on the subject again . . .
Many things are inexplicable: what is outside our universe? - where does space end? what happens at the end of it, etc; where do scissors and pens go? why do 'the elected' in small towns like ours allow the building of yet another supermarket, and so on. But one of the most un-explainable things must be
Homeopathy.
I woke early yesterday with a nasty bout of Cystitis, and spent the whole day hobbling about in loose clothing or lying on the sofa with hot water bottles and dogs. I decided a fast might be good so opted for lots of water and bicarb (ugh) but gave in after lunchtime and ate some rice and a banana.
I tried a homeopathic remedy - Cantharsis, remembering it had worked years ago - unfortunately to no effect.
By bedtime nothing had changed and I was dreading multiple trips to the loo and stalking about in the semi-darkeness downstairs moaning softly.
Thinking about the previous time and the remedy that had worked, I looked up other suggestions: Aconite (monks hood plant, and very toxic); sepia (extract of ancient photos?) pulsatilla, and Nux Vomica - I love this one. Poisoned nuts, I seem to remember, from the Strychnine tree . . . mm.
Anyway, I settled down in bed with hot water bottle and book on disappearing/disappeared London; took took two small white pills (nux vomica) the size of a largish pin head washed them down with a large pinch of scepticism, and then forgot, immersed in my book. Did you know that the word 'Spitalfields' comes from the fields that used to surround a certain hospital in that area of London? And that spital is a shortened version of the word hospital. Incredible.
Fifteen minutes had passed in reading and I suddenly learned something equally incredible (on a small me-scale at any rate). The pain had gone: GONE, completely. No urge to do go, not burning sensation, nothing.
This morning? still the same, all discomfort gone (so far). So, how the Hell does it work? How can a suggestion, a ghost of an extracted thing mixed with water and a tiny bit of sugar effect the body thus?
I don't know, and I like that - something else that science cannot explain, a bit of everyday magic we can all use.

                                  

                                                                     Getty Images

Pine demise

As anyone knows who casts an eye over this blog from time to time, supermarkets are not my favourite places. One of my least favourite is the 'Leclerc' that sits at the edge of our town like a giant mutating virus, gradually spreading outwards, engulfing helpless small businesses and sucking in all shoppers.
The only thing, apart from the fact they sell offcut meat for dogs, that I like, or should say LIKED, about the place is/was the maverick Parasol Pine trees that some misguided person had decided on for the car park about forty years ago.
The trees (presumably small saplings) had been planted in well ordered lines to provide shade for cars. I can imagine the scene: French people in flares stepping from 2CV's and Renault 5s, admiring the shiny new supermarket and small pine trees gently swaying in the summer breeze. Perhaps a few of them might have thought 'I wonder what these trees will be like in forty years time or so, alors.'
What the car park designer hadn't considered was that the mature trees would send out pretty hefty root systems creating fissures and mountains in the once-perfect tarmac. I'd always liked the fact that the car park was filled with non-level cars as if bobbing on a dark grey sea; a reminder that man really has no control over nature, how ever much he tries to imprison it within sticky tarmac.
Of course the wobbly car park- and I like to think, sniggering trees - didn't eventually fit with Leclerc's shiny new shop extension . . .

I think Mark's photograph here captures the desolation of the non-tree car park on a grey Sunday morning alive only with the ghost-rustle of pine needles on a summer breeze (Sob).

Things I know nothing of

Yes there are a lot. Many thousands and millions, in fact, if I were to be shown a pie chart of All Things, the tranche that I would know about would be so infinitesimally small that I would probably feel hopelessly depressed.
However, I am supremely good at wondering about Things; how they come about, how anyone could of even have thought up of the mechanics of say a Bulldozer, let alone set in place the manufacture of one; how people invented televisions, hair dryers, food processors, the fridge, maths, hydraulics, cars, molecular gastronomy - and in some cases - why? How does electricity really reach all the little plastic squares in my house? I have a vague idea, as vague as where I think my liver might be ( really must look at a book on anatomy).
Yesterday, I went down to the supermarket and was amazed to see, apart from the fact the car park was full of rubble (and Bulldozers) that there was a sort of metal stand from which thirty-foot high flames were leaping. I was actually more amazed to see that no one else appeared to be amazed, car boots were being filled, trolleys wheeled and all usual supermarket client behaviour.

I parked and went over to gawp and realised that the whole petrol station was in fact being moved. How do you move a patrol station? Incredible. The danger element (hence the metal flame-thrower as a petrol safety valve?) alone, the logistics, and again, why? What was wrong with it as it was? The powers at Leclerc, having been faced with the fact that Super U had gone through a minor re-looking, have obviously decided to retaliate with a massive overhaul and expansion program, thus a need to move the petrol pump area.
I climbed onto a boulder and studied the scene of the semi-unearthed petrol holding tanks. It reminded me somewhat of the scene in Quatermass and the Pit when they discover an alien spaceship while digging a new tubeline. I'd often wondered, while filling the car, about how big the tanks must be, and there they were, revealed, my questioning answered.

I was obviously getting too close to these fascinating operations as someone in a yellow hard-hat was approaching so I took a couple of hasty pictures and entered the shop to buy A4 paper (imagine the machinery required to cut, bleach, re-cut, pack and deliver it) and cat food - not something I wonder about too much if I can help it.    

GPS assisted shopping and gourmet cat food.

OK. A good Sunday rant, after a stirring bout of housework.

Here, portrayed below, is a selection of Gourmet cat food sachets that Mark bought for our ginger feline. I assume he was captivated by the pure irony of this product, and he did have the beginnings of flu . . .

Some basic points about cats:

They are finicky bastards.

The pet industry know this.

They can make millions of euros/pounds/dollars out of this annoying cat-fact.

Cats do not eat vegetables, let alone a 'julienne' of them.

This however, is useful for the pet food people: put veg in - costs virtually nowt (talking about EU reject veg I imagine) and people somehow feel good that their felines are hoovering up veg particles as it will be good for them.

This particular pack is hyper-irritating as some PERSON in an ad meeting has come up with a fantastic idea: 

    'Excuse me, Mr Vanpooperstook, what about if we add a little phrase on the packet - something like 'Recettes du chef'.

    'Brilliant, Mr Beenhereforever: recipes of the chef - get onto it.' 

    'How about a chef in one of those hats, stirring a copper pan?'

    'Don't be a stupid arse, Miss junior ad-type, do you know what's really in cat food - we just have to GIVE the impression . . . '

I opened one of the said packets this morning; nano-sized pieces of slop fell out (about an egg cup full) the ginger beast fell on it and devoured it in five seconds - well, fifty cents gone then.
So, Bronzino, let's see what was in your delectable sludge, shall we.
(Cat holds up packet).
Colin à la Florentine.
Not Colin of Bracknall done in the sauce of a Florentine resident, I hasten to add: Colin being Hake, and Florentine . . . err, isn't this normally a chocolate coated, nutty fruity biscuit. Oh, I see, à la Florentine, in the way a Florentine would cook Colin/Hake (if they did) and spinach and carrots.
Anyway . . . what is actually in this:
Meat and by-products of meat, fish and by-products of fish (Hake being 4%) Protein of vegetables (of which spinach and carrots 4%) a lot of water presumably and a whole list of other scientific sounding stuff.
To break it down more: 14% protein, humid constituents (translating from French here) wet stuff (not greasy conservative representatives) 79%, 2.5 %fat, 2.2% ash, .05% cellulose. Mmmm. So, mostly grease, water, and 14% protein.
Kicked the cat out in the direction of the shed with a photo of a mouse.

So, supermarket 'GPS' system. (I don't know what it's actually called.)
This has to be the most pathetic invention to date.
I was watching Telematin yesterday and on came the guy who does the occasional feature on the Latest Technology.
SOMEBODY has come up with a sort of half-pair of glasses that you don when entering the supermarket. Somehow, the mini-computer inside them knows (I missed this vital bit) that you are searching for condoms, and then shows you by a series of arrows on the lens where to go. So you walk robotically for the section and then it tells you what to do with them, what size, etc and then you nod your head like a slow motion chicken and it buys them for you.
Fab: next stop, ravioli - compare the makes, the cooking time, recipe suggestions, nod, bought.
Supposing you sneeze while passing the chain saw section, or the most expensive wine aisle - bottle of 1968 Chateauneuf du Pape - bought, only 328 euros.
The woman in the feature duly went around nodding like one of those car back window dogs, and then went out to load up her vehicle, thus negating all that tedious talking to people, using your instincts as to where they have moved the tomato paste and queueing, where you can idly look into other people's trolleys and wonder what they are going to do with twenty-three baguettes and a bottle of carpet cleaner.
The idea is being developed in Holland, where apparently they are spending millions on it. Useful.

UK snapshots 2

I wanted to include this image in the last post, but blogger wouldn't let me.
The Cathedral of Tescos. These buildings must cover about forty percent of UK soil now.
'Helping you spend less' . . . I don't think so. I went in to buy a new digibox for mum's T.V and came out with: the afore-mentioned box, stationary, tea, a Mexican spice pack, a film, socks, crisps, baked beans, rice pudding, and a bag of past-their-sell-buy-date limes. "Helping you spend far more than you anticipated.' Thanks.
I know I didn't have to buy these things, but that's how supermarkets work. You are suddenly in an over-lit planet of consumption; all around people are wheeling trollies stacked higher than a serve- yourself salad bowl in Pizza hut. Oooh, those look nice, I suppose it might be good to buy some more of that, supposing there was a war before Monday.
I remember the first supermarket in Muswell Hill. Sainsburys. I went there with Mum when it was first open in 1833 or sometime. She said I could choose a yogurt. It was a difficult choice between Eden Vale strawberry,  Eden Vale banana, or Eden vale toffee. I went for the latter every time. How lovely it was with its little layer of toffee flavour something on the top.
That was it. REALLY. Now Sainsburys has a yogurt isle as big as Shropshire in each store, with more choices than raisins in a Garibaldi — actually, several packets of them. It's not right. It has to change. I want Eden Vale back; I want to limit the shopping time to ten minutes rather than thirty-five minutes of fondling exotic packaging, and being torn between 'Sainsbury's irreproachable' and 'well, if that's really all you can afford' ranges.
I liked the Greek shop in Muswell hill when I was a kid. That's my idea of a shop. All dark, teetering piles of interesting tins and boxes. Have you got a pack of shoe laces? Yes he would mutter, and disappear for a few minutes, returning with a dust covered pair of Rasta rainbow ones. Fab.
The most exciting time in there, was when they opened a box of bananas and found a black widow spider, not even consistent to EU sizes. Ah, those were the days.

Limoux still has some interesting small shops, not quite as fascinating as the Greek shop, but individual. I hope they can survive in the face of the FIVE large supermarkets we have lurking around the outskirts of the town.