"It's very hard to get lipstick and nail varnish out of your belly button ..."

My unhealthy on/off, love/hate OCD-like relationship with Lidl's breakfast packaging continues:

Many moons ago I posted about the horribleness of this:

As you can probably tell from the above photo (taken with my usual skill on my trusty phone's crapo-cam) they have been re-jiggered. Not only is Goody Rice now known as Rice Snaps but the box has undergone a similarly radical rethink. The two Manga-lite yoofs characters remain but their super-untredy glovettes and bizarre radio-controller games console thing are gone. All they're doing now is just standing there. They're not even looking at the bowlful of product with the psychotic glee of all the other residents of Lidl's breakfast cereal packaging.

(It has just occurred to me that these two characters may have names and may even appear in a string of hilarious breakfast related adventures in some German children's comic - Das Beano or Der Dandy perhaps?)

The wonderfully sugar-stoned, radioactive soup dragon on the front of their Golden Puffs, on the other hand, is more than making up for their lack of interest. I think this creature is as fascinated as I am by the fact that the Golden Puffs floating about, mid-air in the foreground are way smaller than the ones lying in the bowl.

Maybe they swell up really fast as they absorb strange white semi-solid liquids, or maybe the front of the box was designed by the incompetent idiot who produced this handy pie chart of recommended daily food intakes on the back:

Starting at the top and working clockwise: 40% + 20% + 15% = 75%. Last time I looked 75% of something was three quarters - which means those three slices of pie should reach round to about halfway through the milk and cheese slice - whatever happened to the famed reputation for German precision?

I think the Koala Brothers are trying to take over the country.

The Koala Brothers, for those of you who don't have weans, is a well above average, animated kids' TV show featuring the gentle, problem-solving adventures of a couple small Australian marsupials called Frank and Buster and their friends.

Frank and Buster - or vice versa

One of the catchphrases they use in the show is, "We're here to help." They say it all the time. "We're here to help." Frank and Buster fly a little yellow plane and much of the packaging associated with this show features them in the plane towing a banner which says: "We're Here to Help".

Do your own uncomfortable segue from the Outback of Australia to the Highlands of Scotland here because I can't think of one.

My village is not big. It does have have a shop (a Co-op with a Post Office) and a part-time bank (RBS - only open Tuesdays and Fridays 9:30 - 3:30 with an hour off for lunch in the middle.)

Yesterday I noticed the sack of cheap (i.e. unwashed) potatoes I had bought from Morrison's in the Fort had a Customer Service Helpline.

"Hello, you're though to the dirty
potato hotline. How may I help you?"

I'm convinced there is more to this than meets the eye. I also wonder what kind of advice the helpline hands out, given that, above their phone number, there is this wonderful piece of advice.

Do people really need to be told to wash the dirt off food before they 'use' it?

I suspect koala bears think they do.

My recent post about who captained the England World Cup squad in 1966* has caused some confusion amongst the other reader of this blog. I would just like to set the record straight. The England World Cup squad of 1966 was captained by Bobby Moore - not Roger Moore, Henry Moore, Patrick Moore or any one else. Bobby Moore. This bloke:

Bobby Moore, former bass player with Thin Lizzy

* Apparently they won; did you know that?

Why isn't anything fucking simple?
I spent three hours the other day faffing about with mysterious things I should not mess about with in my router settings. I was trying to get something called 'Port Forwarding' set up - I know it sounds like a hangover from the days of the East India Company; "Yes, brigadier, we took the clipper to Port Forwarding don't y'know?", but it's really something to do with letting malicious Russian hackers poke about in your machine while you download crappy old movies from other crappy old movie addicts. Anyway, after spending three hours doing all this, and finally getting it working, I had an attack of the paranoias, updated all the security stuff I have onboard, and managed to fuck it all up again.

Nuts!

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Another brief snippet from the Screenplay of my life:

INT. DAY. THE KITCHEN.

Holly:
Daddy, who was John The Baptist?

Daddy:
He's a character in the Bible, sweetheart. Went round saying the Messiah was coming and then got his head chopped off.

Holly:
Was that when Slomm...? Sall...?

Daddy:
Salome?

Holly:
Yes! That's when Salome did the Dance of the Seven Veils - and when the last veil fell off, everyone could see her bum. (PAUSE) There's no accounting for taste.





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