day

hello there

well. this post, in my mind, was intended as a homage at the altar of a sensational, brilliant advert for a sensational, brilliant concept of a sensational, brilliant product. it has however expanded somewhat from the "little think" stage. this may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. that's up to you, really, but if you prefer my blog posts for some reason to be quite specific and all separated out, sorry for that.

to start, unusually, at the start, today began as a misty, nippy, overcast day. it has turned into more of the same, only with the added bonus of rain; that drizzling, spittling rain which lacks the courage to be strong full on rain that so beautifies England often.

as i stood by the bus stop, then (yes the earlier one, those who troubled their life with a whiny post a day or so ago) (maybe two), i thought it would be nice to take an image of the mists and that. sorry, probably does not look quite as good or picturesque via the medium of blueberry camera as it does in real life.

indeed i should possibly take the iTwat along with me on one of my frequent, regular bus trips to capture such scenes in the majestic glory of Commodore 64 mode. i will see what i can do about it next week, or the week after. or when i remember to.

anyway, on my travels this week - actually as of yesterday onwards, or if you like yesterday and today - i noticed, i did, a new advertisement thingie beautifying the streets of my journey. it's just sensational, it is, and would fully warrant a blog post all of its own either here on any, other, arguably better blog.

i am sure by now you are tired of reading of it and really just wish to see it. so here it is.

yes, it's a shampoo advert. i know here that i have covered shampoo before but this is not just any shampoo. oh no. this is an advert for blended shampoo. blended for Britain, no less. respect, man.

this appeals on two levels, really. firstly, my quest to get a decent shampoo, with Colgate (they of love bead toothpaste fame) (and by the way it costs 50% more than the actual price of the love bead toothpaste itself to post it to an unnamed gent going through a mid-life crisis about it in New Zealand) (hello, Dad) Apple shampoo apparently unavailable to me here and Timotei with the lemon shoved in it like what Jason Donovan advocated apparently banished from this earth, one of these has appeal.

secondly, being a bit of a writer of sorts myself, i can just sooooo appreciate the "creative session" that came and went as they devised the 'blended for britain' slogan. it would have featured an amazing amount of laughter, giggles, cups of tears, sore sides and the very tears of humour dropping onto fingers that tried to type as they trembled with the reverberations of what silly, funny nonsense the phrase is when applied to the world of shampoo.

genius, it is. i like it. i like it possibly more than you may well like the next image of it, which was for no good reason at all taken from across a road with the legendary abilities of the zoom on the blueberry being deployed.

how far away was i from that to use the zoom to get it to do that? quite a bit, really. across from what by Middlesbrough standards is a "mega multi-laned stretch of road". but you will see that in a little bit.

in the mean time, since i am mixing things up for you, a little bit of a special, super duper sort of ace-ish and hopefully helpful consumer advice. advice on lunch matters, no less.

i have, as several of you are all too aware, recently revived the idea of this whole verk thing. i have ended up in a position doing something that i really love doing, and am in an excellent environment with a group of amazing people. good fortune has smiled on me with this, as indeed it did with all the encouragement and support i got as i sought verk. so my thanks all around.

anyway, lunch. the finest lunch that i have yet had on my travels in and around verk has been......one at the sort of cafe / bistro sort of place very near it. which is of no general use, and not as much of a viable option as it could be until i am in the cycle of being paid, as it's a touch pricey, it is.

£3 seems to be very much the base rate for lunch deals, or if you like deals that one can get for lunch. a bit like a recent post i did on class things you can get for a fiver, except for £2 less than that and more food related. 

you people get quite upset when there is a lot of text not broken by pictures so here is what i got from Greggs today. for an amount of £3

i was rather curious about this whole Greggs thing to be honest. i mean, i remembered it in passing when i lived in England originally, but not with any significance. over the years my only knowledge of what has become of Greggs is based on what them off of the Viz have included, and they pretty much claim that Greggs is responsible for the decline of the UK in general and the increase in the weight of people in the UK specifically.

somewhat disappointing, then, to discover that Greggs actually supplied me with a decent, very tasty sandwich that did not seem all that unhealthy, along with a distinctly average (as in good and fine) coffee. for, as i said, £3.

on the £3 lunch front, however, Subway is the winner. they have an excellent range of sandwiches (anything with Italian in the name gets my choice) with a drink (water, juice (i think) or tea/coffee) that tend to be just more filling. nowt against the Greggs, but Subway for me i think. 

Subway also do an ace breakfast thing for a mere £2 that features the excellence of bacon. people have suggested that in my life of walking around and eating a bit better i have lost a touch of weight. i may well be putting it back on as a direct consequence of some of the things said here, or at least spoken of.

but you want shampoo stuff. blended shampoo. for Britain. surely they mean British people, though. yeah? i mean, how do you supply shampoo to a whole land area, and why would you?

yeah, that's the picture of the area i stood from to take the zoomed one above, or something like that. i think you might well understand why i opted to take a zoom one, seeing how that one does not really show off as much as it could of the poster.

what excites me the most about this shampoo is one of them, the green one on the end (left or right depending on which side of the equator you are on), has lemon in it. yes! at last there is a shampoo that has a fruit in it like what Jason Donovan approves and uses. unless he is bald or something now.

granted, it has that green tea nonsense in it too, but i am sure i can simply ignore it or filter it a bit. and yes, as you will have worked out, i will be buying some. i suspect it may cost slightly more than £3 as it is not lunch related. it may even be over the "class things for a fiver" range, but so be it. shoving fruit into shampoo is what Jason Donovan is all about, so it is what i am all about.

BREAKING NEWS i just an email from my beloved Mother-In-Law in which she tells me that she has just today, towards the end of April, received her birthday cards from us. the ones that we posted as recently as mid-February in the wild hope that the SA Post Office would deliver them in time. a mere 6 - 7 weeks late, as it turns out, but that they got delivered at all is a sign of some brave new idea the South African Post Office has taken to about simply doing the f****** job which they are both paid and legally obliged to f****** do instead of spending their days on f****** strike in the hope of being given more money for doing nothing at all of what they are supposed to be f****** doing. bravo, i say.

which ties in very nicely indeed with the next segment of this blog post that has shown a remarkable level of clarity and focus in respect of staying on topic.

today i returned home after finishing off my (almost complete) first week at verk to find an unexpected, unidentified and unsolicited parcel waiting for me. blimey, yes, that is a sensational level of un in my life. it seems as much un for me as Rik in The Young Ones wished for Una.

but anyway, that what arrived in the post for me.

yes, that's right. an anonymous gift of goodwill that was impossible to trace due to the packaging and stamp being unfranked, or not franked to give my life a bit of a break from this un business.

i know who sent it, but will respect the anonymity of it. except to say nice one MS for it. and a big up to SS for revealing it to the world when discussing ace fiver things. and JG for bringing the merry gang together.

what, you may well ask, is it? it's one of them beer mat towel things one finds in pubs and that (or you used to at least) promoting the sheer excellent and brilliance of Lager Of Lamot.

Lager Of Lamot, which used to feature a sabre-toothed horse of excellence on the can and adverts, was the chosen drink, of course, of legendary, near-mythical-except-they-were-real band Bad News. thus, Lager Of Lamot became my drink of choice.

only they stopped making and selling it not long after Bad News made it popular. i suspect the two are related, honestly. perhaps the makers of Lamot just had no sense of culture and said "if the best our product can be is being the stuff what Bad News drink then the world shall not taste it". which is a shame.

dear me. £7.90 to post £5 of toothpaste loaded with love beads to New Zealand. at least with the Viz pencils thing of mine it was that you could only get the pencils off of the Viz; i suspect there are perfectly acceptable styles of toothpaste freely available in New Zealand. blimey.

if you have nothing better to do, have easy access to a stamp, stationery and/or postal services, then do feel free to write to the following :

Colgate-Palmolive
PO Box 3964
Sydney
NSW 2001
Australia

when you write to them, well, write what you want, but if you could slot in there a request that they stop being quite so "bastardesque" and immediately start selling Colgate toothpaste with the mouthwash beads in it to the people of New Zealand. not mouthwash crystals and not mouthwash strips, but mouthwash beads, as in love beads. apparently there is a big, big difference between them.

no, i have no idea why my Dad hasn't simply contacted them directly to ask about it. apparently it is easier and more efficient to pester me to send the stuff to him than it is to ask the manufacturers to sell it to him. go figure.

so yes, i am now the proud and very happy owner of an item that relates fondly to the world of Lager of Lamot. the important thing, though, is that someone took me quite by surprise with that thing that i love the most; getting things in the post.

yeah, bed time i think.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!