Slogans: a blog with a bite
“Huffin puffin steamin dreamin honeymoonin lovers kissin, ride the railroad tonight”.
On the beach beside Sandown Pier on the Isle of Wight, at 7am one summer day in 1983, a group of a dozen bleary-eyed men (median age 60) sang the above song, without a hint of expression, irony or double-entendre, to bemused presenter Chris Tarrant. The harmony chorus was making a guest appearance, as quirky acts often did, on the now-defunct TVAM. Tarrant had smirkily announced the song as “a classic!”. Most of the men are no longer with us, except the once youngest member who is writing this distraction - before the horrors that follow. A video compilation of Tarrant’s seaside breakfast tour is still out there in the ether but thankfully excludes this episode.
But these days, whenever I think of that pier, I am more likely to picture the words emblazoned on both flanks, clearly visible from the prom: “A WHOLE DAY’S FUN IN ONE”. What? The signs were still there when I visited a year ago. A whole day’s fun in what?: a whole day, in one place, in one piece, in one person’s imagination perhaps. Who knows?
I’m amused and entertained by other apparently meaningless slogans. I suppose “a meal in itself” makes some sense, but I forget what it was used to promote. Almost everybody has heard “every little helps” over the past 31 years, and it continues to fool folk in its faux hominess. And a house marketing website urges you to “find your happy”. Again, your happy what exactly? Maybe it’s a cryptic crossword clue, or just a corporate misprint. Now ‘find you’re happy’ would make sense, as in “I woke up this morning and found I was happy to still be alive, despite this nonsense”.
My father also enjoyed whimsical wordplay. He would refer to that late Irish BBC Radio 2 presenter (“Tel”) as Jerry Woburn, and to that nearly Cymreig composer of The Lark Ascending (RVW) as Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. When very ill going into hospital he was asked his religion. “Nullifidian” he said, instead of ‘no faith’. He had habitually used a dictionary for his bedtime reading. Playing along, hospital staff asked him if Nullifidians had any particular dietary requirements. “They only eat food” was his reply. But my favourite was when he referred to TUC crackers (remember those?) as “Trades Union Congress biscuits”. I don't think he knew that this is exactly where the name originated (via Belgium).
Continuing his tradition, I can’t help but notice the recent growth of a supermarket section under the slogan (well, label) Plant Based Foods. Thinking this must be the right place to find fruit and vegetables, a.k.a. the greengrocery department, I find instead a chiller and freezer section filled with expensive chemical convenience products with surreal names such as Chuckup No-Cluck Chicken, somehow reminding me of a butcher’s shop in Machynlleth that displays a sign proudly proclaiming: “All the meat sold here is vegan. Our cows only eat grass”. A local farmer tells me he actually farms people. As well as tending cattle and sheep, he had diversified his land with a camping and caravan site. The visitors are his "herd/flock". Warning: this post becomes more 'unsavoury' further down the page.
I have just been eating, purely in the interests of research you understand, a proprietary “Festive Vegan Wellington”. Its texture and taste were of a pork pie. My immediate reaction was it seemed rather pointless, mindless and silly, in stark contrast to the “Buddhist meat” widely available in the Far East. A message of mindful compassion in the latter rather than mindless commercialism.
Not yet committed wholly to veganism, due to the draw of dairy, I am what airlines call “lacto-ovo-vegetarian”. But in terms of shameful animal cruelty, one of the most compelling arguments for veganism I have seen is in a 1994 video by much loved and recently departed Benjamin Zephania. Thirty years ago, veganism seemed so much simpler, before it became corrupted by commodification and commercialisation. The video was clear that your “plant-based” food indeed came from the garden or greengrocery. The longstanding lentil seems to have been laughed out of favour these days. For the record, I love lentils. Now there’s a slogan, or even: "Fake meat is factory food! Love a lentil!". And nothing wrong with a nut roast either.
Since learning Cymraeg, I have noticed the enjoyment some local people have in creatively mixing up the languages. In the south it’s sometimes called ‘Wenglish”. I learned early on that the word ‘moron’ means carrots. But I shudder at the Gothic horror, by association, of the Plant Based section of the supermarket. ‘Plant’ is the Cymraeg word for ‘children’. Oh dear. Mock meat too realistic then, and no more jelly babies thanks. I'm relieved that some retailers refer to the section as 'Plant Menu': 'Bwydlen Plant' would then be the children's menu. Meat free dinosaur nuggets anyone? Enough nuggets from this dinosaur I reckon.
When a news item on the radio or TV said that the police were called to a crowd shouting slogans during a protest meeting, my father would look up from his paper and shout “SLOGANS!”.
A blog in itself.
LINKS
Sandown Pier | A Whole Days Fun In One!
A video betraying the cringeworthy social mores of the TVAM era has been redacted.
TUC | Mondelēz International, Inc. (mondelezinternational.com)
The history of Tesco’s slogan Every Little Helps – Creative Review
British politicians' worst meaningless cliches and buzzwords (theneweuropean.co.uk)
The Mike Sammes Singers - Tuc and Tuc 2 (youtube.com)
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I look forward to your comments. Also it would be nice to know where you are in the world. Thanks for reading.