I thought this was a ludicrous thing to say the first time I read it. Come come, surely you cannot expect us to believe that this charcoal will never go out? What, ever? What if I deprive it off oxygen? Inundate it with water?
Then I realised that there’s a big difference between going out and burning out. So it’s not as absurd a claim as I first thought. And me a copywriter. Tsk. Although you could be picky and ask what kind of crap charcoal it is that does go out.
Specially formulated for washing-up that just goes on and on.
This is more like it. Fairy Liquid is historically supposed to last longer than all of its rivals, but the makers of this washing-up liquid, found in our Greek villa, clearly want to muscle in to the top of the ‘longest lasting’ spot and stay there.
Of course, the Greek writing around the logo may contain a sneaky caveat. It may read ‘Just because it’s called ENDLESS doesn’t mean it won’t run out at some point’.
It reminds me of the song Shirt by the marvellous Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. At 3:47 you hear Vivienne Stanshall saying ‘Good morning, can I have this shirt cleaned express, please?’ The lady shopkeeper (played by Neil Innes?) says ‘That’ll be three weeks, dearie.’ An exasperated Stanshall says ‘Three weeks? But the sign outside says 59-Minute Cleaning!’ Then comes the most beautiful, argument-settling response in the history of customer complaints. ‘Yes, that’s just the name of the shop, love.’
So they could call it Endless and justify the name on the grounds that it’s just a name. After all, who takes the name Fairy Liquid literally?
Postscript: There being no dishwasher at the villa, it was a close call as to whether the washing-up liquid would last as long as our holiday. But on the penultimate day, the maid partly replenished the bottle from an enormous tank of the stuff kept under the sink. So technically it turned out to be endless after all. Not that I spent my holiday obsessing about washing-up liquid…
Have you ever been skydiving? Me neither. But now I’ve done the next best thing and even have the certificate to prove it.
Last Sunday the BNM family went to Airkix in Milton Keynes, one of only two indoor skydiving venues in the country.
The elegant and reassuring exterior of the Airkix indoor skydiving centre
Using air that’s funnelled upwards through a vertical wind tunnel at speeds of around 150mph, the idea is that you experience all the exhilaration of unlimited freefall, without needing to jump from a plane and risk getting your parachute entangled in the aircraft’s undercarriage.
Or it failing to open, the reserve ‘chute failing too, and you hit the ground, eyes clamped shut and dry voice screaming, at terminal velocity.
Or, it does open but you fail to control it properly and you land in a swamp or on a busy motorway. Or a freak gust of wind blows you onto electricity cables or into the spinning rotors of a helicopter about to take off.
These thoughts were in all our minds as we set off for a fun family outing.
Clouds of the sort we wouldn't be plummeting through. Image courtesy FreeFoto.com
Soft landing
But any such thoughts were dispelled as soon as we arrived at Airkix , where the emphasis is very much on safety first. (This clearly being preferable to scrape up the remains later.)
We sat through a training video and then listened intently as our instructor took us through the various hand signals he’d use during our flight, vocal instructions being impossible due to the noise.
They seemed straightforward enough. A bent middle and index finger means ‘bend your legs’. He straightens his fingers; you straighten your legs. Fingers apart means spread your legs. Thumb and pinky extended means relax. There were a few more.
Got all that? We smiled and nodded and trooped off to be fitted with helmet, goggles and appropriately named jumpsuits.
Ooops...I thought I googled goggles
Mrs BNM leaned in to the wind tunnel first and was instantly airborne. The instructor made sure she didn’t zoom off into the seemingly endless void overhead or flounder about on the mesh floor, but otherwise she seemed pretty much in control. The rest of us – there were nine people booked for the 1pm flight – clapped enthusiastically on her return to terra firma. My go!
Terra terror
I stood at the opening to the wind tunnel and fell forwards into the hurricane.
Instantly the instructor appeared at my face and jabbed his finger manically upwards. Of course! I was facing down. Typical newbie error.
I quickly readjusted my posture so that I looked directly ahead. That better? Evidently not.
The instructor stood before me, alternately shaking and nodding his head and making exaggerated facial movements, mouthing what looked like “Ooooooo-waaaaaaaa!” and then “Reeeeee!”. Eh? I looked at his hands for elucidation, but he seemed to be doing all of the finger signals simultaneously. It was like watching someone trying to get a glove puppet to breakdance in the nude.
Airborne epileptic event
So I straightened my legs, bent my arms, outstretched my knees, looked up, splayed my fingers, bent one leg, looked up a bit more, crashed into a wall, arched my back, span around, lowered my hips and cupped my hands, all the while attempting to maintain the joyful smile that he said was crucial for the onlookers and the video.
After a minute and a half, I found myself standing up and with a ringing in my ears that turned out to be dutiful clapping. It was over. For now.
What goes up must stay up until we say otherwise
Did I mention you get two goes? You do. With scarcely enough time for my jowls to resume their customary downward-hanging position, I was back in the hurricane again.
I felt as if I hadn’t properly taken on board the lessons learned from my previous session. The instructor must have sensed this, as my freefall – in real skydiving it would have been known as death plunge – was restricted to a few seconds of uncontrolled chaos.
After that he grabbed my wrist and ankle, leapt from the floor and together we span around and raced up, up and up into the dark, cold, windowless steel funnel. Then we plummeted downwards, stopping just short of the flimsy steel mesh and, just for laughs, did the same thing again. Then once more, this time with me flying backwards for that added element of surprise.
OK, skyboy, where’s my certificate?
And then it really was over. With shaking hands we climbed out of our jumpsuits, removed the goggles and rearranged our faces.
On the way out we picked up our official Airkix certificates, which had tick boxes on them saying things like ‘Could ascend and descend unaided’. In an act of unbridled generosity, our instructor ticked six or seven achievements that I certainly don’t remember doing, when all that was really needed was a big tick next to the box that said ‘Has all the natural aptitude for skydiving as a grapefruit’. But don’t tell anyone.
If you fancy having a go yourself, Airkix are in fact lovely people, the experience is pretty remarkable and Milton Keynes is easy to get out of 😉
Me ascending. Or descending. Or maybe a rare moment of serene motionless.
After what seems like months of telling us that Norwich Union is renaming itself Aviva, the company has at last come out with its first stand-alone advertising campaign.
Gone are all references to Norwich Union. Instead, the company seems to be referencing a highly successful poster campaign from another financial services company. Unintentional, I’m sure. The Prudential campaign dates from the 1990s, so no one working in advertising now would have been alive to see it.
An ad from Aviva's new poster campaign
An ad from Prudential's old poster campaign. Pic courtesy advertisingarchives.co.uk
On Friday evening Mrs BNM and I had the pleasure of meeting up with our old friends Celia and Ian at EV near Waterloo. I’d heard good things about EV from the people on kudocities, but the closest I’d ever been to eating there was when I once stood outside it on my way home from work. So not very close at all. Let’s face it, you don’t get to truly enjoy a meal, much less appreciate each course’s subtle nuances, merely by loitering in the general area.
Image courtesy London SE1 community website
EV is a Turkish restaurant situated in a small street that seems to be full of nothing but EV-branded shops. There’s an EV bar and an EV food store as well as the EV restaurant, all facing on to the same street that should probably be renamed EV Avenue. It’s difficult to invoke the exotic ambience of Turkey in London SE1, and to be fair the owners haven’t really tried. Instead they have created a terrific drinking / eating / wholefood-buying area, with loads of tables set outside amongst a forest of pot plants. It’s all very relaxed and unpretentious.
EV is a member of the TAS group of restaurants and the place is reviewed on a local website here. The food was delicious, as Turkish food often is. I recommend the lamb from the very reasonably-priced set menu.
Warning. Soft sell ahead
The rockface tombs at Dalyan.
Anyway, eating Turkish cuisine was appropriate as Celia and Ian are now property owners over there. They’ve bought a tw0-bedroomed apartment in Dalyan, a small-ish town famous for its Roman rock tombs, a reed-banked river (where parts of The African Queen were filmed) and, a short boat trip away, an absolutely stunning beach.
If you gauge holiday resorts using the football shirt index, Dalyan scores an acceptable 7:100. So for every hundred British men you see in the town, only about seven of them will be wearing shirts bearing the name of their favourite football player. Plus they’ll have brand new trainers in order to comply with some kind of holiday law.
If you’re interested in a holiday in Dalyan our friends’ apartment sounds ideal. You can check out the details and availability here. We’d be going back ourselves but we’ve been twice now and it’s a big planet with plenty of other places to visit. So you have a go. Go on.
Some photos from previous Dalyan trips
We spent a week island-hopping on board this impressive gulet back in 2007
Our hotel pool. Not Celia and Ian's. Theirs doesn't have a mushroom thing in it.
BraveNewMalden 