These dark, December
days, when evening replaces late afternoon, seem to create a short time before
bed when it’s nice to rest and relax in front of the television. After dinner
and the de-briefing of a hectic day at work, it’s feet up with a cup of tea and
the remote control. That’s when it starts.
“I’ll get it when the adverts come on.”
“I’m waiting for the adverts.”
Television advertising is big business, especially now with Christmas
upon us. I’ve seen images of tables filled with festive food, children in party
attire looking out for Santa and found myself joining in with ‘Jingle Bells’ as
I nip out of the room to collect that forgotten something. I’m not concerned
that our Christmas table won’t have a mountain made of profiteroles, though I
am bothered that I’m in danger of forgetting to buy some crackers, not the ones
for cheese, the other ones. An animated gingerbread man would be fun for the
little children.
The first TV advert in the UK was in September 1955, (I just
missed it) and was for Gibbs SR Toothpaste. I’m glad I looked it up because I
was sure it was Signal. That snippet of research made me delve further into
finding out what SR stands for, Sodium Ricinoleate. I think it’s responsible
for the bubbly foaming that gives a fresh feeling. This would be before the use
of fluoride toothpaste was encouraged. I’m interested in dentistry but I’m not
a scientist so two sentences into Wikipedia and it became a technical blur. I
can work out knitting patterns but acids and compounds stun me into silence.
It’s annoying when a good film is shown on one of the
commercial channels. A break for adverts kills the moment. We often record the
film first, and then fast-forward the adverts. I’m very glad that the sharp,
edge-of-seat drama, Rillington Place is showing on BBC.
The adverts that annoy me more than anything are the ones
that come through my letter box. It’s not so much the leaflets for takeaways,
roof repairs, window blind specialists and the like, it’s the ones that come
addressed to me personally in an official looking envelope labelled ‘Private’,
pretending to be from the bank.
Recently I’ve been getting letters from a finance company
offering to free up some of my pension and give me the money now, except they
only deal with private pensions, not state pensions. Well, how hilarious is
that, to me who supports WASPI. Eventually, I found a contact email address and
asked them to remove me from their list. Wait and see.
I think the most intrusive adverts are the ones that jump in
from nowhere when I’m reading an article on-line. It’s usually newspaper sites.
They seem plagued by pop-ups that cover the section I’m reading and they don’t
always respond to the ‘close’ symbol.
Adverts in magazines indicate who the publication is aimed
at which is useful when looking to submit an article or piece of fiction.
I apologize for my lack of a poetry contribution today. I’ve
had to go Christmas shopping. A certain store was advertising a ‘3 for 2’ deal
on toys.
Thanks for reading, Pam x
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