Another damn blog http://thisisrjg.posterous.com More unedited thoughts from someone you don't know posterous.com Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:41:00 -0700 More Hattie porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/more-hattie-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/more-hattie-porn

What better way to start the week than with the übersexy Hattie Jacques? This advert is from 1980 and would be one of the last things she recorded before she died, stupidly young at 58, in October of that year.

The advert is for Asda Superstores and, whilst everything else in the entire world has changed in the intervening 31 years, it's really odd but comforting to find that Asda is still using a version of the same music in its ads even now. Some jingle-writer is living on their own island in the Caribbean from the PRS fees alone. 

Also present is Asda's "price punch", already by 1980 becoming divorced from its original meaning -- it was women patting their front pockets and making the change rattle; you know, because they got a lot more change from an Asda shop and had collectively forgotten their purses. Here it's already turning into the tap-tap, bleep-bleep, pat-pat meaninglessness of the current adverts. The worse thing about the price punch thing is how they've incorporated it into their "team cheer" (no, really) that they even make suppliers bloody do at meetings. When I sold toys for Tiger Electronics, they were one of my customers and I had to go there for briefings; they'd make us all stand up and do this ridiculous team cheer: give me an A! "A!" Give me an S! "S!" Give me a D! "D!" Give me another A! "A!" Whose the king? "The customer!" Do the price punch! Etc! I tended to stand there thinking, I'm sorry, I'm British and don't do this sort of thing.

Still, never mind Asda and its Walmartian nonsense. Let's sit back and just gaze at Hattie's lovely, smiley face and cheeky glances. This week's getting better already!

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:45:51 -0700 Friday morning Public Information Film porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-public-information-film-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-public-information-film-porn

For younger readers, let me explain what's happening here: those fitted carpets and laminate floors you live with are new things. For most of my life, houses had linoleum or tiles on the floor and, in more important rooms, a nice rug that, if you were barefoot, you'd aim to land on quickly on winter mornings. Rugs of the time didn't come with anti-slip rubber underneath, even doormats. Instead, they were hessian-backed, just like the mats on a helter-skelter. You see where this is going.

In the 1970s, if advertising is anything to go by, women were all lazy cows who did nothing at all during the day, so men with voices that implied gravitas would call through and give them pointless make-work to do. Things like sewing torn clothes and scrubbing the bath with Vim, anything to make the ladies less indolent between the husband leaving for work and them putting the dinner on while wearing their best clothes. Included in the list of Things Women Must Do was polishing the linoleum and/or the tiles to get them sparkling, so that the children, dog and husband could then immediately get them dirty again and the woman could look vexed but then smile knowingly and reach for the Flash.

This leads to this PIF, and the state doing battle with SC Johnson and other purveyors of floor polish to idle females. The poor loves: one minute a man from capitalism with a deep voice was telling women to get down on their knees and polish the floor until it shines (with a 'Ziiiing!' noise), the next a man from the state with a deep voice was telling women that if they did so, the next person to walk into their hall would die horribly and it would be all their fault because they'd been warned and hadn't listened because they were waiting for part two of 'Crown Court' to start.

So this is why we did away with lino and tiles and got fitted carpets and laminate floors and the like: capitalism could stop selling floor polish to women and switch to selling more profitable things like gin to them instead, and the state could stop warning women about the horrors of floor polishing and instead print posters warning women they should be drinking less gin. The upside, of course, is that women can now spend the day completely rat-arsed, so that's win-win.

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Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:27:16 -0700 Tuesday morning car porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tuesday-morning-car-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tuesday-morning-car-porn

I love this advert. Great music, some light comedy, a quick flash of almost-racism and at the end a big list of the car brands of my youth. All this from a state-owned corporation, British Leyland, which couldn't make a decent quality car that people wanted to buy for love nor money.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 01:00:44 -0700 Monday morning TV pres porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-tv-pres-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-tv-pres-porn

Television presentation these days is so... frenetic. WATCH THIS NOW A PROMO AFTER THIS THAT WATCH ANOTHER PROMO HERE'S THE PROGRAMME THE PROGRAMME'S ALMOST FINISHED HERE'S WHAT'S NEXT HERE'S A PROMO HERE'S ANOTHER PROMO HERE'S THE PROGRAMME, 24 hours a day.

It doesn't encourage me to watch. It encourages me to watch only what catches me eye in the paper and that only on BBC iPlayer, where I don't have to put up with some much LOUD DESPERATION all the time. I think Sky started this, with its interesting-at-the-time shrieky style of presentation in the 80s, shouting at you to watch 'Hogan's Heroes' or 'As The World Turns' as if they were new and good. Or new or good.

Slowly but surely, the rest of television decided it too needed to shout to be heard. So now it's all shouty and fast and none of it sticks in my head. It's also supposed to not give me time to turn over, although it does give me time to turn the bloody set off, but at least that doesn't drive me to other channels. It just drives me to pick up a book.

Slower, less-flashy presentation with programmes recommended rather than PROMOTED LOUDLY always suited me better (so it's not just a getting-older thing). For a start, a gentle ident sticks in my mind; a flashy, flashing, music-heavy ident doesn't. Having an appropriate programme recommended to me -- "If you enjoyed 'Some Aspects of Shrimps', tomorrow evening on BBC-2 we have a history of shrimp farming in the Hebrides. 'Some Aspects of Potted Shrimp' is at 9pm tomorrow" -- after the programme has finished works; having a scatter-gun promo over the end credits, advising me that since I watched 'Doctor Who', I'll love watching 'EastEnders', patently doesn't work.

So here's a brief reminder of earlier days. BBC-2 comes on air for the afternoon (yes, afternoon - if there was nothing to show, a channel showed nothing rather than 'Hunt the Celebrity in the Attic with a Hammer' repeats) with a simple jingle and form-up; the announcer calmly welcomes us; on with the programmes. Perfect - not least because 30 years later I remember this ident, I remember BBC-2's then-output, I remember watching television voraciously.

It has now been 3 weeks since I watch any live television.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:26:15 -0700 Friday morning train porn again http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-train-porn-again http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-train-porn-again

More excellent marketing from British Rail: why face the hell of the airport or stress of the motorway when you can sit back and relax on a comfortable, speedy Intercity 125?

This is probably British Rail's most famous advertising campaign, appearing in a couple of versions (originally ending 'British Rail', the advert was still in use as Sectorisation came along and BR dissolved its regions in favour of 'Sectors' - Provincial, Intercity, London and South East and Freight, hence the 'Intercity' tag line with only a little double-headed arrow). Like much of British Rail's marketing, it now produces a smile of recognition and warmth, not least for presenting the inside of the Mk III coaches so well. They've been refurbished since privatisation, with view-blocking high seats (in case there's an accident - it'd be better if you're killed instantly by hitting your face on the seat than slightly more slowly by being thrown into the carriage) that no longer coincide with the windows (who wants to look out of the window when travelling when you could be reading the dire on-board advertising magazine) and a reduction in legroom (because, hey, we need to see if all modes of travel can give you a deep-vein thrombosis).

Nevertheless, despite the shysters who now run the railways, the central part of the advert remains true: there's no better way of travelling than by train.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:33:41 -0700 Monday morning Hattie Jacques porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-hattie-jacques-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-hattie-jacques-porn

Ooh, this is wonderful! Even if you're not a railfan, this advert should make you leap on to a train and take a journey somewhere - anywhere - just for fun, because it features the most sexy, most sexual, star of the twentieth century: behold Hattie Jacques getting an 'Awayday' ticket from Sevenoaks to Charing Cross to do lunch with Jackie Stewart*

Be still my beating heart!

* Warning - link plays music at you, in a crime against teh internets.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:35:24 -0700 Friday morning tram porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-tram-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-tram-porn

You may already I know about my love affair with Belgium. It's a great little country, industrious but quiet, progressive but traditional, exciting but dull. It's everything I need in a holiday destination. So saying that, we're going to Italy by train in September and missing out on Belgium entirely. Ah well.

Belgium loves trains. The federal and local governments have clearly lavished money on their system. It's almost entirely electrified and there's a lot of it - you're never more than 2km from a railway line. It's cheap, the trains are clean and huge and usually quite new (there's a few 1960s shockers on the more out-of-the-way stopping commuter services, but even these are fun. My friend Paul dubbed them "ratboxes" mind, when he lived there).

What people don't tend to know is that once the centrally-planned railway network in Belgium was complete, the plucky little Belgians decided to fill the rest of the limited space with trams. Not just local, city-wide trams like they have in Brussels and Manchester, oh no. They went the whole hog, building tram lines that ran from the railways stations to the tiny villages. Steam trams. Trams that took goods from Nowheresville to be sold in the metropolii. At its peak, and I'm now making this statistic up, you were never more than a metre from a tram track and frequently actually stood on one about to be senselessly mown down.

They're nearly all gone now. The system was effectively destroyed twice by German holidaymakers (Belgium: voted most popular holiday destination in Germany 1914-1918, 1940-1944) and the second go was fatal. Over the course of the next few decades, the tram lines were taken up, leaving wide cycle lanes at the side of even the most backy of backroads and surprisingly frequent bus services to tiny hamlets.

The remains of the nationwide system (the Vicinal or Buurtspoorwegen) are to be found in the cities - Brussels with STIB/MIVB's tram, Metro and pre-Metro services (don't ask); TEC's Charleroi pre-Metro and Han-sur-Lesse caves services; and De Lijn with trams in Ghent, Antwerp and all along the Belgian coast. That's the video above: the Kusttram, which runs along 68 bumpy kilometres from Adinkerke at the French border to the wonderfully named Knokke (pronounced 'knocker') near the Dutch border. Almost the entire journey is along the seafront, except for detours through the middle of any nearby towns.

I'm sure the ball and chain will correct me if I'm wrong, but in 3 or 4 trips I think we've now covered the entire route. It's a pretty route with an oddly mixed clientele of tourists doing the tram route as part of their itinerary and locals popping to the shops. And for €5 per person you can ride up and down it all day. Who could ask for anything more?

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:46:00 -0700 Monday morning train porn II http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-train-porn-ii-tags-british-rai http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-train-porn-ii-tags-british-rai

It's 1970 and Waterloo station is grubby and dark-looking and allows the free-flow of people. Thank heavens Railtrack/Network Rail improved it, so it's now bright and shiny and makes sure that when it's busy there's a serious risk of people being crushed to death against the retail booths carelessly dribbled across the concourse! Ah, progress.

Also, it's 1970 and thus five years since British Rail introduced "Rail Blue" livery for the trains. As you can see, a good half of the slam-door Southern region deathtraps are still in Southern Railway green. Nowadays, thanks to vinyl wraps, we can relivery trains as they pass from franchise to franchise to franchise in a never-ending, dizzying merry-go-round of our money in only a few hours. We just don't bother very often. I've been on a Northern Spirit painted, Arriva Trains Northern debranded, Northern Rail over-branded West Yorkshire PTE-financed train with Intercity 'No Smoking' stickers in the windows and default Regional Railways North East posters quite recently; what the ordinary passenger is meant to make of this thrusting display of deck-chair rearranging by successive incompetent governments is anybody's guess.

Give me relentlessly blue trains any day: they make it look like a railway, not a political football being passed around homophobes and various European state railways.

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Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:45:54 -0700 Friday morning train porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-train-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/friday-morning-train-porn

A lovely 1988 corporate advert for the full spectrum of services offered by British Rail, made even better by using Auden's Night Mail poem originally written for one of BR's predecessor companies, the LMS.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:45:00 -0700 Monday morning train porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-train-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/monday-morning-train-porn

When the lying liars of the last Tory government (you may recognise them - they're often the same lying liars in the present Tory government) decided to smash the world's most economically efficient railway company into 137 pieces for reasons of ideology and vindictiveness, one of the lies they told was that British Rail had been poor at marketing the railway.

So here's proof that, while BR did have its faults, poor marketing was never one of them.

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Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:45:00 -0700 Train porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/train-porn http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/train-porn

Ooh, Hooton before it was electrified all the way to Chester! And hot 507-on-101 action as people change trains! Just look at those slam-door Class 101 rattly deathtraps and the 507/508s not in fucking yellow!

Aah, I needed that.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham