A matter of taste

As a beginning, to say that I am anti smoking would be somewhat hypocritical. In my life I have smoked on and off for the best part of 32 years, which is over half a lifetime.

It is ten years since that great and final giving up, with the exception of the odd pipe and cigarette smoked on stage I have stopped. I welcome the ban and Im glad to not have smoke smelling clothes should I enter a public house or have that throat tightening gasp as air filled with active and passive smoke enters the lungs.

Smoking for me was an experience. I had frequent periods of brand alliance but in my smoking career, I have used pipes, both clay and wooden and a range of cigars. I have inhaled snuff. Squeezing a button with thumb and forefinger to make a much greater pinch ability, the fine brown and aromatic powder, was placed on the back of the hand and snorted up a nostril. This was usually followed by bouts of sneezing and floods of tears to the eyes. The powder too ended up down you shirt. Smoking tobacco was quite the easier way to get the nicotine fix.

Smoking was always an experimental activity. The first furtive Woodbines, borrowed from a friend, were smoked because that’s what your parents did. Admittedly not down a back alley away from prying eyes, but simply because it was what grown ups did. And that was all manner of grown ups and of course the cowboy heroes in films.

How long can impressionable young people fail to succumb?

It didn’t catch on for me rally until as a student when Player’s number 6 were consumed in the five week panic revision in May and June and then it stopped. Well, it didn’t after the third year. I left university with a degree and a social habit and then began a romance with the weed.

I flirted with brands, charmed by their names and appearance. The packaging seduced me and I took delight to flaunt the colours and names in public. There was such a huge range of cigarettes just waiting to be sampled. It was not a love affair just a very big infatuation. Filtered or plain, it did not matter.

There was the clean and fresh packet of Churchman’s number 1, contrasting with the almost all white Olivier. I was charmed by the flip top bright red du Maurier box and the romance of Piccadilly with its city chic feel. The transatlantic soft pack of Peter Stuyvesant, a pack you tapped to cause the cigarettes to emerge. There were others too, but occasionally I used the popular brands that were sponsors of big events – Embassy and John Player Specials, as black a packet as Olivier was white. And naturally the gold pack of Benson and Hedges.

I found cigarettes that were not the familiar white cylinder. The black and gold of Sobranie, the pinks and the elliptical Passing Cloud and the heavy scented Gauloise all went through my hands.

It was a thrill to enter the tobacconist and choose something by the name and packaging that looked exotic and intriguing. It was always a disappointment to accept a common brand. They lacked the challenge and difference. Except for Park Drive. Park Drive seemed to enjoy great popularity around Sheffield where I can to work in the 1970s. They were small and distinctive in flavour but they offered a good variety to the taste of smoke.

The affair of the cigarette ended in my early thirties. There was a brief pipe smoking distraction where tobaccos, both tinned and pouched, were bought on the merits of their name and labelling and later on the same with cigars which went from the tiny Tom Thumbs, smaller than a cigarette, to the King Edward Imperials and true Havana smokes from Upmann and Romeo and Juliet.

But what it comes down to is variety. I like to think that in my own way I am not prepared to make do with the ordinary and everyday brand leader. I am not satisfied with Fosters lager or John Smith’s bitter, smooth or cask. If smoking showed me anything, it was there was a whole range of product out there which extended beyond tobacco. I am not a great connoisseur and I do not just know what I like but I have tried to push the boat out a little way from the shore. It works in the beer and whisky I drink and to a lesser degree with wine. With food as well for eating too has had its experimentation, but the prices begin to increase when restaurants are involved.

It is a shame that blandness and lack of taste adventure seem to suit so many people. Let them be happy with their mass product. Curiosity has helped me in my own perhaps limited way become adventurous in the things I taste.

Logistic solutions

The daily existence for most of us is quite humdrum, but within all the daily routine there are opportunities for light relief, research and moments to ponder. Not all of us claim to be at the cutting edge of science to appreciate a new discovery or theorise about how things came to be. Artistically we are not the great creationists of music, art or literature but there is plenty to do in the humblest walk of life to work at a level that suits any of us.

Look a round and take notice of the many notices that litter surfaces. Not for the Lynne Truss punctuation police but simply for the delight and wonder that a few brief words can create.

Let us begin with slogans and company taglines. They both probably evolve from mission statements which used to have a purpose. Their purpose was to force management to make hard decisions about what the company stood for. They are probably well thought out in focus groups surrounded by Perrier water and in a conference venue. After the process of ownership and concord, the generators generally go back to what they were usually doing before.

But the messages are in abundance, not only at the head of correspondence but they are written on shop fronts, entrances to organisations and on their vehicles so this makes for a mobile activity when driving along the nations roads.

Oh, the power vested in so few words. Here are some of the most powerful and effective taglines ever propagated:

Powering People- How? Simply plug them into the mains or create a battery holder about their bodies.

To make people happy Disneyworld. Count the smiles next time you might visit.

To preserve and improve human life Wallmart. Much formaldehyde to sell?

We try harder Avis

Think different Apple Now I like this. Although it should be an adverb, differently, I think really encourages taking a different slant on things. Very Apple.

Just do it Nike Obviously the result of a long meeting

The art of performance Jaguar Oh alright

Reach out and touch someone AT&T and risk a slap on the face at least

Fly the friendly skies United Airlines while the USAAF make them unfriendly

Don't leave home without it American Express which is always true whatever it is (your keys, the shopping list……)

The ultimate driving machine BMW Well that’s just showing off. And BMW drivers are a modest bunch

The choice of a new generation Pepsi as they had no choice in actually being here in the first place.

The happiest place on earth Disneyland but count the smiles of the visitors

We love to see you smile McDonalds but don’t copy the staff

Welcome to Scotland and some might say you are!

Which does not really bring me to another observation that is quite fun. Where did logistics come from? And why did it almost become universal?

The magazine Private Eye has for months collected readers’ submissions for another word which, by now, is so ubiquitous that the Eye’s column seems superfluous. The word, gracing many a wall and van panel, is solutions. No time to muse over it. It is everywhere. If something is manufactured or a service is provided then it will deemed a solution.

Logistics is another prominently place word. What happened to haulage or transportation? Well haulage is a slug of a word. Say the word and you can se the ox cart groaning and the tune of Byddlo form Pictures at an Exhibition droning in the background. It’s just not zippy enough. Transportation belongs with the greasy spoon café and lorries. Logistics zings as smart as the livery and uniform of the fleet artics. An altogether pacier word.

Whatever can these two be replaced by? In a past time solutions and logistics had chiefly chemical and military connotations respectively but they now have become universal. Who would have backed it? One company or group must have adopted the word and it has spread. There must be companies who backed the wrong word, costing thousands in resprays.

As with another mass adoption which started out as the promotional gifts of farm suppliers to farmers in the USA , the baseball cap has spread like a pandemic to be the hat all for millions. How long will it last? What will replace it? Please.

The phenomenon is spooky.

Complain... I'll write a letter

December 29^th 2007

Dear Sir,

After completing the process to register my POA to administer my mother’s accounts in November 2007, accounts, I then proceeded to apply to bank online. On receipt of a letter signed by Alistair Thomas of Customer Services, I was told that I would have to register the POA document by visiting my local branch, which is in Barnsley. An appointment was made with Joy Bradshaw for November 28^th.

Shortly afterwards I received a letter dated 29^th November from Mark Banks, Head of Online, thanking me for completing the first stage of registration for POA and issued me with an unique username. I was told, by the letter, that a temporary password would be received by me within the next few days.

By the 11^th of December, I had not received the temporary password. A phone call to 08456 02 00 00, gave me an apology and told me that another temporary password would be issued.

After about 6 days, nothing had been received. On phoning the department, I was told that the process could take up to seven working days. I argued that this was certainly more than a “few days” and that the letter should have been clearer on that point. The temporary password has not yet been sent to me.

However, the password has been sent to my mother. Both the initial and subsequent passwords were sent to her, the first on November 29^th and the second on December 12^th, in letters signed by Mark Banks.

The address used was the former home of my parents, which has been empty for the past 12 months, I discovered the letters on a visit to meet with a contractor to carry out some work in the property. I was quite amazed.

The current address of my mother is quite clearly stated on the application forms I initially completed when having to register POA with her bank accounts. I discovered that the online department have two addresses for the accounts and they cannot explain why the information I received, and was told I would receive, was sent to different addresses.

Now it gets stranger. I asked if I could change the address so that the former home of my mother could be removed. This was made possible by transferring me to discuss security details so that I could change the address by telephone, so that mine alone would be used. After going through the security application to set up the facility, I was transferred to telephone banking. On identifying myself, by the secure process I had just set up, I asked to remove the erroneous address and have just mine as the contact point. I’d like you imagine what I was told. Yes. My home address is the one to which the account belongs.

I was assured that a note would be sent to the relevant department to prevent my mother's old address being used again. I am now online and I think I have achieved my aim, but not without some frustration, some misinformation and a bit of fortune.

I have not the time to go into details about how I received a further application form to open the whole process of registering the POA, after the main, initial POA registration had taken place, prior to this episode. I am simply left with the impression that vital information regarding a bank account and changes to it, do not seem to be moved around satisfactorily.

I would like you explain why information promised to me did not come to me, why a few days as quoted in letters means seven working days when explained by an online staff member, why members of the online staff couldn’t tell me they had sent twice a temporary password, albeit to the wrong address and why they had not got my address which was asked for by your telephone staff to confirm who I was.

I look forward to hearing from you. Etc, etc

And I did hear from them. There was an acknowledgement saying they would respond to my requests and investigate my complaint and in which they said they would include with their letter their leaflet on how they dealt with complaints. I was delighted to point out with a sense of irony that the promised enclosure was absent.

Now I do like a drink...

I may be an alcoholic. I don’t sit in the park or queue at the supermarket for my daily fix of strong cider or cheap wine, but I may be an alcoholic.

When drug addicts are asked why they take drugs and get hooked to the horror of non drug takers, their answer is that they like the effects. The cream cake syndrome. We all accept that cream cakes are not the healthiest of foods, but they are available and tempting in the main, and many people who know better will eat them.

I am like that with drink. I like the effect it has on me. I do not drink to the point of unconsciousness and don’t lose social control, but I am a slave to the cosy, relaxed feeling that alcohol provides. I find it hard to resist. I do acknowledge that too much or too often alcohol can create a problem and that my long term health could well be suffering, but the short term fix, for that is what it is, is not to be denied.

Occasionally, I do have a morning after and then I am full of resolve to have a day off, but by about ten in the evening, the morning resolution has faded and I want a drink. I don’t stop with one. There has to be another and occasionally a third. I do not stint on the measure either. I know this by the frequency I need to restock the bottle. And that leads to another confirmation of the opening statement. I am sometimes a sly buyer, pretending a reason to buy to cover the real reason that I just need to drink.

I once gave up drinking alcohol for the period of Lent. This was after very public declaration in a school assembly and several subsequent reminders to friends and colleagues. Stating your desire to avoid alcohol in a pub with friends was an excellent reinforcer. I cam unstuck though. It was quite by accident and through a little ignorance. Most on alcoholic drinks due tend to be sweet or fruity or both. What I craved was a bitter flavour, the flavour I enjoyed with beer. I did not know at this point that Angostura’s bitters contained alcohol, though by the time two splashes into diluted to a half pint of soda, it would almost be a homeopathic concentration. But that was the drink I discovered that met my taste and I could happily sip.

I saw the irony. It was revealed by Steve the Landlord, who, I rather think, enjoyed my modest humiliation. It was a bitter sweet moment. In fact, although shattered my Lenten promise, it did create a pleasant drink.

But to my current crisis. I can happily give up the wine and the beer, but it is just that whisky moment at the day’s end that I cannot conquer. It worries me and I need to address it. Which is why I have written this - as a form of self therapy. I hope I can make it work. Perhaps I should rediscover my Angostura’s moments.

After all, I do not want to abstain totally.

Way of the word

I like words. I enjoy the way they, by certain uses and arrangements, convey a whole range of communication. I have enjoyed the fun to be had in word play and take a pride that I am derided and groaned at for my almost habitual tendency to create puns, malapropisms, spoonerisms and other playful devices.

I can remember at an early age wanting to know more of them and can recall learning a few and using them to expand my vocabulary. A very simple early word was acme, always the brand name on any item purchased by Wiley Coyote in his relentless pursuit of the Road Runner. I assumed innocently it was a short catchy word used by the cartoonist, but I was delighted that it was a Greek word for the highest. Nothing but the best for Wiley.

I now knew that words came from somewhere and so began a lifelong if not thorough fascination with meanings and origins. But the process of word creation is still alive. Words are still being created by the same processes that created the current stock. Naturally in the process of creation and development, there are casualties. Words do fall by the wayside, no longer to be on the tip of the tongues.

I hear a certain grumpiness from some quarters that the English language is in decline. The vocabulary warriors are keen to point out when they feel a word has been misused or that the way we speak is deteriorating and is no way like it used to be. But it surely has always been the case. The English language has been bashed and battered, altered and augmented from all manner of invasions and creations. I would not have the wonderful if limited vocabulary that I do have had it not been for the innovation, invention and influence of others both near and far. New technologies are bringing about changes to the way and manner in which we speak. Not only are words changing, but the way that we actually make utterance alters too. Declining regional accents are making way for a more universal ergot.

Apart from being discarded, words change their meanings. A case of adapt and survive. Although the words are only passive in the process. St Paul's Cathedral was once described as being "….awful, artificial and amusing." Sir Christopher Wren might have felt justly insulted, unless the meanings of those words are seen within a contempory meaning at the time of their utterance. The speaker was actually meaning was declaring, to Wren’s obvious smiles of self satisfaction, that the building was "awesome, clever and thought-provoking."

Today, to describe something as awful would bring about a degree of approbation, such is the current meaning. Clever people, perhaps of a criminal bent, may use artifice towards their ends. Queen Victoria may well have been disappointed that the subject she considered herself not amused by was simply a dull and shallow one with no intention of making her rock with laughter. (This supposed quotation was attributed to Queen Victoria by Caroline Holland in Notebooks of a Spinster Lady, 1919. Holland attests that Victoria made the remark in 1900, but supplies no details of the circumstances but by that time she may well have had not a lot to laugh at.)

Words do change over time to start meaning something else. These are two current examples I have noticed in television news

Both of these two examples are to do with achieving success. The first is result which is being used in the sporting sense by commentators and participants to mean a win.

“We are hoping for a result tomorrow,” is the oft quoted line. Only the context and the speaker may vary. What they of course mean is a win. There will always be a result unless the match is abandoned. This is the way that words go. There was little word, namely win or won ( after a result has been obtained of course) which thought it had a place for ever, but for how long?

In a similar way I feel the word justice is going the same way.

“All we want is justice”. I have the feeling that what is actually wanted is a win.

Poor old win. Attacked in two contexts. Will it survive the onslaught? Or will its usage be done for or simply expanded in the thesaurus.

There will be others. After all words are used in their millions by millions everyday, in speech and writing. Survival is a tough business and there are bound to be more casualties. Some will sink without trace, some will change and adapt and new ones will vocabularise daily. Just as watchable as all those nature progrtammes with their daily battles of life and death. Simply listen to hear the struggle of words and be happy in the thought that no blood is spilt and no real hurt is done.

Shelfish observations

I have always found an ambivalent fascination with supermarkets. They exist in great number. They offer easy parking and easy shopping and, for some the main thing - cheap shopping. I do not want to enter a debate about prices, quality and convenience and the variety of what is actually on offer. (They don’t always stock the same range or varieties. Apart from their own brands, you’d think they would. Supermarket shopping is always a gamble.) But that is but one fascination. They also offer opportunities fun and creativity.

Eddie Izzard commented that a supermarket creates the chance to play at shopping. Simply collect the trolley and you are free to fill at your own desire and time. At the end, you simply walk away, abandon your trolley and leave the shop. A kind of shop lifting, but you don’t actually break any law beyond the act of nuisance. You are, according to Izzard, simply rearranging the goods. Except you are not. For someone has to sort out your vandalism, at the supermarket’s expense. For frozen food, I feel it is an act of the worst vandalism to leave frozen products away from the freezer.

But a visit to a supermarket will show that this style of consumer subversionist behaviour has not caught on in the way Izzard imagines. In fact we do not dare to subvert the supermarket style of buying. We are slaves to the system. We accept and often follow the routine of trolley filling without question or challenge. But I like to feel there is something of a challenge going on.

Perhaps out there, there is a band of supermarket freedom fighters who, in there own small way of protest, are making a point. Or someone who is wanting to challenge your imagination. You must have seen the evidence.

But the evidnece would not be obvious to the routine, programmed shopper. We all know that as we walk along through the countryside, there are those who are oblivious of seeing any wildlife happening around them. So it is with the supermarket shopper, who fails to notice the small but definite changes to the ordered arrangement of goods for sale. We do perhaps notice the empty shelf, like a gap in a row of teeth, but these are subtle changes and can challenge the mind to think if there was a reason beyond supermarket revenge, it is a challenge to decide what process, both mental and physical, led to the placing of a rogue item.

Let me present some evidence by way of examples of these rogue items. You will notice, if you look up from your list and programmed route, the placing of a jar of mouthwash on the shelves for cat food, or a packet of cup a soups placed on the shelves for teabags. You must have seen them.

Now some could be easily explained, especially when the rogue item is more or less the addition to a trolley by a child and its discovery, perhaps somewhat annoyingly, by the parent. But there are those rogue items that do not obviously fall into that category.

Take this one. It was seen only today at a branch of one of the big five supermarkets. No supermarket is denied this minor phenomenon. Perhaps the nature of the rogue item may vary, but that would call for a more detailed programme of observations. A plastic bottle of Fairy liquid washing up liquid had been placed on a shelf displaying electric coffee making equipment. Quite a good example of an inexpensive every day item alongside a luxury kitchen addition.

I now always ask how this came about. Is it minor supermarket vandalism of the type that Eddie Izzard hints at? If not, then what kind of trolley inventory took place for the shopper to remove the washing up liquid? Or is it some strategy adopted by the stores to draw your attention to a new line or certain product? Or are they randomly placed items to stir the mind to think about items you may have overlooked to place on your list?

I much prefer to think that a massive mind change came about in the brain of the shopper on a surreal foundation.

“No, I don’t want any washing up liquid. I want a cappuccino maker.”

Next time you wander the aisles, keep you eyes open for these treats, these shelf anomalies and ponder on their creation. What hours of fun along the bleak canyons of commerce.

And it is not restricted to supermarkets either.

Eat well

There is currently a huge debate about the quality of life of chickens and the availability of cheap food. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have thrown their arguments into the ring. I have not watched either’s programme but I believe that we should be aware of what happens to the animals that we eat. I know that in order to be eaten an animal has to die. It is not rocket science. A fact of life is death.

I have never killed an animal for food. I did run over a squirrel quite by accident which upset us both, mainly because the death was totally unnecessary and, according to my wife Trish, totally avoidable.

Much earlier, Tom, my then father-in-law, used to shoot regularly at the farm owned by his cousin Jim. The twelve bore gun was packed in the boot of the car and we would drive of to the farm near Settle.

He and Jim, booted up and carrying broken guns under their arms with flat caps on their heads, would head up the hill behind the farmhouse. I would walk with them to act as beater if needed as directed by Jim. Essentially, Jim did the beating for he knew his land and where the hares would tend to hang out. Tom would be stationed at the tree, and, on this occasion, had me standing near but not too near so as not to impede the shooting if it should happen.

There was a shout from Jim from somewhere to our left. He’d sprung a hare from its form and it was now sprinting down the field. Tom flashed the gun to his shoulder, took quick aim and fired. The hare, struck by the pellets in full stride, simply began tumbling head over heels and then stopped abruptly. One cartridge, one dead hare. The hare was carried to the house after a further beating came to nought.

My children, then aged four and six, bloodied their hands helping their grandad skin and joint the hare, making it ready for the pot. It was delicious. There were no qualms or displeasure that we were eating a once living creature. If you like to eat meat, then you have to kill, be witness to the kill or have a distant acknowledgement of the kill.

The sterilised packaging of the supermarket meat further distances the eater from the killing. In my past, meat was bought from a butcher, who displayed in his shop carcasses both whole and part and birds still with heads and feet and whole rabbit complete with ears and feet still in fur. There was no doubt that what you were buying was once living. Now the supermarket chicken has most of its identity cut or tucked away and is solely a pale lump on a plastic tray.

What Hugh and Jamie are doing is partly to remind us of the origin of the meat we eat. And like the hare, meat should come from an animal that should have had a life that was free and natural.

Space is obviously limited and to provide the demand for meat there has to some way that maximises the space available. The product may cost more if more care is to be lavished on our meat providers, but there is the always the vegetarian option. I suppose the only way to ensure an animal has a good life is to stop eating them. Never mind the baby cuddly fluffs called animals that give reason for many to become vegetarian. Vegetarianism and veganism I applaud. I doubt the “Ooh, aren’t they lovely, I couldn’t eat them” argument. If we insist then we must accept meat protein production is land demanding and greenhouse gas producing. That is the good enough reason to become vegetarian. Or let’s simply eat less meat and then only eat that meat whose processing has considered the living creature has had some quality in its life, however short.

Free range is phrase that too is free ranging. Once on a walk, my friend pointed out some long low sheds on a field below where we were walking. He asked us to describe what we could see in the field. Having answered his request he then asked if we could see any hens. There was not one. My friend explained that the hens that lived in the huts laid eggs that were sold labelled as free range. He had never seen a hen at all making free range of its environment. Apparently, free range simply means access to the open land via a small opening in one of the shed walls. That the hens remain within is there choice but they do not fit with what I would call free range. It's a bit like hearing from someone who had had a holiday in Turkey (no animal link intended) but had only experienced that country from within the bounds of the all inclusive hotel complex. There are humans who are quite happy to accept a battery package when on holiday.

Once I looked after a few hens for a friend. The hens were kept in a run in the garden about 30 feet long by 4 feet. A small hut at one end of the run sheltered them but they were free to range. I have seen organic hens making use of free space. They looked happy and fit. They were not quite fully organic, but the pecking and swallowing of a thick creamy coloured slug by one of the hens almost put me off eggs forever. I have always enjoyed eggs and these, my payment for being guardian, were delicious.

Overheard. “I don’t think I could eat anything that was covered in fur.” To which I offered, “So no Kiwi fruit and peaches then.”