Getting It Right

"Close your eyes and hold out your hand" the Youngest Boy said. Usually I recoil at the thought, knowing that I could so easily be the recipient of a slug dragged out from under the shed. But as he was still in his pyjamas I allowed myself the treat of having this tin presented to me. "It was going to be part of a new space rocket, but as you like old-fashioned things I thought you'd better have it". "Thankyou very much", I said, and really meant it. The thing is, of course, is that it's not a 1950's grocery item, or particularly nostalgic for the good old days of cocoa drinking in slippers by open fires. No, this is the result of Waitrose's designers knowing a thing or two about, well, good design. And you just know that it won't be replaced in a couple of weeks' time by yet another tweeking presented at the Monday morning strategy focus outreach meeting, a fate that regularly befalls it's better known competitors on the adjoining shelves. Good design like this is timeless. The right colours, the right type and a classic wood engraving that tells us what cocoa actually is. (Is this one is by Christopher Wormell?) So yes, it will be up there on the kitchen high shelf with Ovaltine and Milo and the Quaker Oats tin from a Greek holiday many years ago. Just because I really, really like it.

Shelf Life

I felt I had to quickly redeem myself after the last erratic posting. And as I fell into the local post office this morning for my Telegraph, the opportunity stared me in the face from the window. I have received warning glances inside the shop when I've lingered a little too long looking at a display of similar items above the cigarettes, bottles of Wincarnis and stamps (bringing new meaning to the phrase 'top shelf'), so today I whipped out the camera and ran for it. But what survivors. Mainly medicinal, (that blue glass laxative bottle worries me) it's good to see an unused Bronco toilet roll with its optimistic tag '500 Sheets'. The hero for me though is that little Nescafe tin, a reminder of when this seemed such a ubiquitous item in the post war pantry. However, just looking at the description on the classic label of what they've done to it does make you wonder how far the contents had come from anything resembling a coffee bean.

Diamond Dog

What is it when we keep seeing faces in in the mundane? The Virgin Mary on toast, Hitler on a bath plug? Pareidolia, that's it. So is it just me that sees a dog's head here, made out of a scrap of paper, a stray twig and two bits of dirt. Spotted on the pavement in the next village, I now expect good fortune to follow in its wake. Which in my case will mean the seat being taken out of my trousers by a slavering rottweiler. No, I must be positive. It means that my erstwhile publisher will come back from his lunch of tripe and onions at St. John's in Clerkenwell and say "Ooh, I must ring Peter immediately and commission him to do eight more bestsellers for me".

Where's That Then? No 1

Having run out of Find The Fault pictures for a while, I thought it would be interesting to look at period photographs of citys, towns, villages and landscape. So where's this then? All I can tell you is that the street scene was photographed by Karl Gullers for one of those ubiquitous Odhams books of the 1950s, and up until this trip to England Mr.Gullers was famous for photographing the Swedish Royal Family. I hope this helps.

Look Out, Autumn's About!

I couldn't quite get my head round BBC's Autumnwatch. What started out being a very worthy attempt to let us see dormice putting their pyjamas on before going to sleep live on camera, has somehow degenerated into lively presenters sitting on a sofa joshing and ruffling each others' hair. The one bloke who appears to do any work just sits smiling in the dark outside some Highland croft and then shows us film he shot yesterday in broad daylight. But at least we now don't have to put up with that little chap from The Goodies grumpily anthromorphising everything in sight. So I wearily switched off and reached for What To Look For In Autumn, a Ladybird Book written by E.L.Grant Watson and illustrated superbly by Charles Tunnicliffe. I then took to wandering about the lanes in my patch of country, marvelling at just how much is still as he pictured it in 1960. A shepherd in a sheep fold (well, a bloke in a four-wheel-drive), a pale moon lighting the church tower, traveller's joy smoking the hedgerows, a bonfire lit at a field edge and pheasants strutting their stuff over rotting fungi-covered logs on the margins of the woods. And not a ratings-safe presenter with a stack of prompt cards to be seen anywhere.

Find The Fault No 48

Well, we've come to last Transport Series card this morning. And a good one to end on, I think. Next week we'll have something different to get us going over our morning teas and coffees. Still, I think there's enough going on here to keep us going for a while. Younger readers may struggle a bit with the concept of a trolley bus- basically a tram that didn't have to rely on travelling between rails. And yes, they did have wheels that big, very intimidating to cyclists and pedestrians alike. And can you still get Tit-Bits magazine? I do hope so.

Chocolate News

So. The manufacturer of Velveeta ('bedder than cheddar') wants to take over one of our most 'treasured institutions'. Kraft's unwelcome bid for Cadbury's certainly seems to have spread the Primula amongst the Flakes, and the rumours have started. Dairy Milk is to be made in Gdansk, fingers of fudge in Poznan, that sort of thing. And England threw its hands up in horror, conjuring up visions of the violation of white-hatted lines of girls singing on production lines in blossom-filled Bournville, milk arriving by canal barge from Gloucestershire meadows, dancing under the trees in the lunch break. On hearing that Cadbury's Somersham outpost near Bristol may be closed, it suddenly became Fry's old factory, still turning out Five Boys I expect. No, as much as I bemoan the loss of our brands to corporate greed (HP Sauce made in Holland) , this is how it is. Cadbury's (I still use the apostrophe 's' they dropped years ago) is a multi-conglomerate itself, employing as it does Bertie Bassett and Jelly Babies, and will flog it immediately if the price is right. Any chance that Kraft will continue to make Fruit 'n' Nut under the apple boughs is as remote as Tomaszo Mazowieki. Of course I hope it won't happen, but sadly I think the days of awarding each other little tin CDM medals for worthy efforts are well and truly over.