Railing again

I have just been trialling the eeepc as an on the move blog-assister. You can check the results here.

eeepc

Specious Drivelly

I am in a bit of a rage about good old postie and his jolly ol' chums. (Such as Nick Clegg below).

I won't bother you with the details (just yet) but I was a bit surprised to see how little gets thrown up on the web when you type into Google "Royal Mai*^~~~*****!!!!! ****** bad *******improvement needed from the little ****s"

Maybe I am in a tiny little minority of one with my postal misfortunes.

The only thing that really cheered me up was coming across this site promisingly called Hellmail.

I immediately started looking for its forum so I could vent my rage, get help advice and all those forumy things. Turns out they don't have one. Not any more they don't.

The site has a general feel of "the Royal Mail do slip up from time to time but they're all human and they do a tremendous job given the circumstances".

Take this attitude and combine it with what they say on their site and their speling ...well draw your own conclusions (front front front). I love the begging letter at the end.

On 31st August 2007, we closed our busy and highly succesful forums after two years, to concentrate on news and editorial. It was not an easy decision to make and we still, to this day, mourn the loss of so many valued contributors but we felt that forum content often sat at odds with editorial, was enormously time consuming, and could in some cases be damaging to businesses and jobs(my italics-erik). Hellmail has since that time become an important source of information for news and informationand arguably m(o)re effective.We still believe in everyone having the opportunity to put forward their own viewpoint and many of those original forum members went on to become Hellmail writers (see 'Extended Writing Team' above..Editor: "We particularly welcome views from former-members including TMFTPO, Amber Leaf, Singing Postman wherever they may be. Their contribution was enormous."

Yes Comrade Editor we agree gratitude is due to such exemplars of the Postal IdeaL Nothing to do with this outfit I guess.

(EDIT: I have since got a couple of responses to emails that I sent to Hellmail and they were really nice and I feel totally rotten for mocking them)

I'm in general raging mood and will slip into politics briefly.

Nick Clegg is promising "an in-and-out Referendum on Europe. As in "in-and-out of my manifesto whenever it suits matey"?

In one sense Labours betrayal is far more disgraceful - after all the people who voted for them did it in the knowledge they might actually form a government.

But they are the Liberal Democrats...does that mean nothing? Perhaps it means "let the Liberals do the choosing for you (plebs)"?

The Cameron squeeze seems to mean the Libs have to break their manifesto promises just to get some attention.

And all the crap that has come out defending it all...."that's what we pay MPs for" "the issues are too complex" and "media's undue influence". They should all get jobs at the Royal Mail immediatement

(EDIT - I have subsequently heard a Radio 4 profile of Nick Clegg and I don't feel the least bit rotten. Its not him anyway - if it was "he" could easily be "solved". Unfortunately its a bit more widespread and deep-seated than that).

thanks to sarahmonster for the sentiment on flickr

europe referendum betrayal nick clegg
royal mail stalin mister bean

Fast Food

A couple of Plumstead chums (ages various) have taken it into their heads to run for literally mile and mile to raise money for people needier than themselves.

The prospect of completing this gruelling course is highly likely given the intense training routines they have committed to.

If you have a few pennies to spare why not sponsor the Blah Blah Fishcakes as they join Sport Relief's big event?

plumstead sport relief

Fags passed

A comment on my last post prompted me to do a bit more nostaglia searching.

Yahoo answers (1 and 2) featured strongly for some reason. There must be some kind of search-engine-users profiling that might explain why that is -- Google images was unable to provide a single image of Player's Number 6 but that was probably because of my apostrophe.

It did provide an Embassy picture though with a link to a pertinent site.

Are Players still going? The short answer is a "Wikipedia Yes". The full story is here.

Our yeah I did find a Players No.6 picture somewhere. A beermat as it happens. When I smoked them I didn't have much legal reason to come across such a thing - I was too young for pubs.

I gravitated towards No.10 myself. I could fit one into a Swan Vesta match box - the idea being that this would be a clever disguise if a teacher chose to search my pockets.

"Ah...so what do we find here Fuller?"

"A matchbox sir - like for non-expellable activities like aimless match-flicking and minor acts of arson all totally innocent sir"

" Right! You better not be lying to me Fuller....move along"

My preferred Half Coronas wouldn't fit obviously so extra care had to be taken on the suspicion-raising front.


Embassy smoking 1970s Swan Vesta
Players cigarettes

You're never alone with a Flickr

This attractive dummy appears on the pages of a little Flickr group I came across this morning. Nice isn't she?

The group is called Smooth Smoke Slogans and it specialises in good old fashioned cigarette adverts.

I used to love the look and feel of adverts as a young impressionable smoker. I can always recall to my mind an advert in Hampton Hill High Street for a packet of Carltons - a cool purple type of affair (as were the packets) and thought I would try and fit a packet into my extensive sampling programme. I didn't get round to it partly because I had half an idea that the lads at school might pick up on the fact that the packaging was a bit, hmmm, feminine. I also think that the unavailability of the brand in packets of ten was another off-putting factor. I didn't want to blow two weeks tobacco budget on an untested smoke despite that colour being so lush and enticing.

Who knows what impact buying some Carltons might have had on my future development? I might have been humiliated by my mates ("No thanks Fuller, I'd sooner wear high heels") and given up on the whole cool smoker act and gained an extra ten years of life. Alternatively it might have led to me discovering I did like wearing high heels as well. Though I confess I am wearing my partner's polka dot pyjama bottoms as I write this, that's about the limit of my cross-dressing. Honest.

More cigarettes presented similar problems for the adolescent male smoker. I always liked cigars and cheroots and More obviously looked cigar-like. You could just about get away with them for a few days before buckling down to some proper cigs again. But More Menthols? No way, no never no way.

Thanks to hier-houd-ik-van for his picture "Mary Long".

You can find a bit more cigarette nostaglia here.

smoking cigarette advertising flickr advertising hampton hill