Being Chased by an Advert.

I was sitting on my balcony in the mountains, generally minding my own business and reading a news article on the internet www.tagesanzeiger.ch. If you are interested, the article was about the German Government’s change of mind on a tax agreement with the Swiss, when suddenly, this advert started to move about. I was trying not to pay the advert any particular attention, but it kept catching the corner of my eye.

It’s distracting enough for me to have to translate a tricky German subjunctive, and trying to work out such basics as “Have they agreed it?” or “Haven’t they agreed it?”  This can be difficult in a foreign language, which only goes to show you (as my Ali said at the age of 5) that there should only be English.

Anyway, I digress as usual. I was trying to concentrate on the article. No worries, I was scrolling down the page, so was soon out of sight of the advert. No. Wrong. It came after me, sliding down the right hand side of the screen, like the honey oozing off a spoon, not too fast, but with an inevitability that was only too depressing.

The fight was on. It was an IKEA advert and was chasing me down the page. It started its sequence with the unveiling of a curtain. I tried to escape, going up and down with the scroll bar, only to see a bouncing ball announcing 20% off all Kommodes (chest of drawers; what did you think it meant?) up until 15 October (Can’t wait for the 15 October).

Is there no escape from the Advert? It was  no good. I had to abandon the quest for the truth about the German – Swiss Tax Agreement; Will they agree? Won’t they agree?

I feel oppressed, my civil liberties infringed, my personal movements being tracked, the secrets of my mind being extracted by unknown forces..

This is all too reminiscent of the sinister TV series, “The Prisoner”, where our hero was trapped by giant balloons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner in case you are unfamiliar with this classic 1960’s cult sci fi TV series.

I’ll have to buy a newspaper tomorrow morning to “Read All About It”. Perhaps that is the strategy. Let’s make the online offering so irritating and unreadable that people will just have to buy the subscription.

Well, I am one step ahead of them here. I have just taken out an annual subscription, so that I can agonise over not knowing whether the Germans and Swiss did or did not reach a tax agreement, at 05.00 am in the morning, and without the distraction of a bouncing Kommode advert, and the sliding curtain.

Mark you, if the Harry Potter films are any predictor of the future (and you never know), we could have moving adverts and pictures on our newspapers. Now that would be something to drive us all completely mad.

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With apologies to REM’s, “Bad Day”, with the opening line “A public service announcement followed me home the other day” and who have just announced their break up after 31 years.

Flat Eric Awards

My good friend Nigel Rogers an his wife, Christina, have been staying with us. We were discussing the dismal state of the world and agreed that it wasn’t like this in our day. For some reason, we had read an article in the Spectator, which wrote about the proliferation of award ceremonies, the particular one in question at that time being the BAFTAs.

So because we were in disagreeing mood, we disagreed and decided that the Spectator must be wrong and there were not enough awards.

This deficiency needs to be addressed. We have decided to establish our own awards. Too many people have been excluded from having an award, the categories discriminating against people who don’t qualify. As discrimination is a bad thing, someone should do something.

Everyone must win something. For example, Nigel has been nominated for the Cooking Ratatouille on Monday award. Christina will be nominated for the “Skiing with her Skis very close together 15 yards ahead of Colin” award. Colin will be nominated for the “Complaining very loudly about the music before it has been switched on” award. And so on. You get the idea.

We will need our own Awards ceremony and everyone must cry and be very emotional. Flat Eric, our sponsor, will take charge of the proceedings.

Flat Eric will be lobbying the Government to set up an “Awards Equality Commission” Do you think that he can get a grant for this?

Shouting at the Television

I have always found it very therapeutic to shout at the television and the people on the news, the broadcasters, interviewers, interviewees, and the journalists themselves. They are so irritating.

Of course, my behaviour is disruptive and annoying to anyone trying to watch. It is also irrational. But I have been off form recently. Not nearly enough anger and heckling recently. But I was on good form Monday evening. “What is the matter with that man? Has he got a crick in his neck?” referring to the reporter in Los Angeles, who had his head at 45 degrees, as if consoling an upset colleague, speaking about the arrest of Michal Jackson’s doctor.

“Can’t that woman shut up?” I shouted as the presenter asks the same question in 4 different ways, taking longer than the answer itself. Then of course, there was a senior civil servant, desperately trying to stay on script, looking sincere, but with his hands, shoulders and, in fact all moving bodily parts, totally static, as he talks in a style that I reserve for reading train timetables. “Has he got piles?”

Then I was brought down to earth, as I waited to hear whether the name of the soldier killed in Afghanistan is someone we know. There is an empty feeling the in the bottom of the stomach, which is not relieved as the name is not given, although the family have been informed. Now I go quiet.