Adverts - Fizzy Toothpaste

 

 

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 apologise 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