A Missed Marketing Opportunity?

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Dalmatians, flatulence filtering pants, Shreddies

Apparently the latest retailing sensation is Shreddies.  No, not the cardboard like substance that you eat for breakfast because it’s supposed to be good for you, but pants.  Special pants.  “Flatulence filtering underwear” to be precise.

I can see a problem here, not because the product isn’t needed, it undoubtedly is, especially amongst people like my mother’s third husband whom she married when she was 81 and he was 83.  We often suspected that much of Ronnie’s forward propulsion was due to wind power.  However, are those who need such garments really going to face going into a shop to buy them?  Can you imagine the suppressed sniggers of the sales assistants as you ask for a, ‘Mixed 5 pack.  No, they aren’t for me, you know, a friend asked me to get them…’?

I can see a booming trade in packages in brown envelopes.

And giving your nearest and dearest a three pack of Shreddies is hardly going to get the same delighted response as a beribboned package from Victoria’s Secret, is it?  It would take a brave person to suggest that the contents might come in useful.  If they’d been around after I’d sat next to my mother at the ballet at the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux I might have been tempted, reckoning that the inevitable disinheriting was worth it.  On second thoughts, as she was staying for several more days and I’d have had to cope with a deeply affronted and reproachful parent, I’d probably have bottled out.

Anyway, it seems to me that the inventors of Shreddies have missed the real target market…

Come off it, more often than not, you’re right to do so, especially in this house.  If they came up with a ‘flatulence filtering’ device for dogs (not a cork) which worked on  Dalmatians, I’d be beating a path to their door, waving my credit card.  Right now.  Flynn keeps visiting something particularly noisome in the woods and having a snack, and boy do we know about it…

Luckily he’s my daughter’s dog and sleeps in her room.  She’s a brave girl.

The Return of the Ginger Ninja

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Kevin the Krool

It was beautiful this morning.  Not warm and there was a slight breeze blowing, enough to chill the cheeks but the sun was shining and this far south there’s enough heat in to make taking the dogs out on a sunny winter’s day an absolute pleasure rather than a chore.  Then, crossing the field behind the house I saw something reddish…

Kits is our senior cat and an independent soul.  She’s very affectionate at feeding time and when there’s a fire lit and thoroughly enjoys accompanying you on a walk (once when I was taking the dogs over the main road I saw a ginger figure stepping daintily along the white line behind me), at all other times she rows her own boat.  In other words she’s all cat.Unfortunately Kevin loathes her.  He’s seven years younger and quite possibly seven kilos heavier (let’s just say that he’s been guarding against a famine recently) and he leaps on her at every opportunity.

This sort of harmony is not common.

She’d begun to spend more and more time away, we suspected that she’d found another billet because she was never very thin when she did turn up.  This time she’d been missing for over two months and we’d taken to keeping a nervous eye on the verges every time we went out just in case there was a ginger corpse there.

As I hoped, it was Kits in the field this morning.  She was comfortably ensconced in a little nest watching the world go by and certainly didn’t have the air of a cat who’d been homeless for two months.  She chirruped politely when she saw me and got up making it quite clear that as I was there I could go back home now, never mind the dogs hadn’t had their walk, and she’d come with me to catch up on two months worth of breakfasts.Her tummy is now as round and tight as a drum and she’s asleep in one of the dog baskets.  Kevin jumped her when she’d been in the house for ten minutes and was firmly booted out but sadly it doesn’t look like he’s got any intention of letting her live in peace in the house.

Kevin throwing his considerable weight around. That’s Desi’s bowl.

Still she’s obviously found somewhere quite comfortable for when she’s not here and she looks perfectly content with life so I suppose we’ll have to settle for just seeing her when she chooses to visit.

As I said she’s all cat.

Question of the day…

A common sight in the vines around here

I was walking the dogs in the vines yesterday when I saw a pair of knickers next to a freshly pruned vine.  I didn’t care to examine them too closely but they didn’t look like they’d been discarded due to an unfortunate accident, they hadn’t been there for very long as I go past there quite regularly and the only item of clothing I’ve ever seen there before is a forgotten jacket left hanging on the end of a row and as they were green, lacey and pretty minimal I assume they must have come off a female.  None of the vine workers I saw pruning that parcel over the last couple of weeks looked the type to wear ladies underwear though of course you can never tell.

Not such a common sight in the vines…

This begs the question, why did anyone go into the vines to do whatever she or he did that involved leaving underwear behind?  It’s all very well saying that people will go anywhere for a bit of how’s your father but it’s been raining a lot around here recently and you have to be really short of places to go if you’re prepared to settle for a muddy, damp vineyard that’s in full view of an, admittedly little-used, road.    When I did the vendange several years ago on my co-workers was known as Dirty Emilie because she had a faintly grubby air about her that drove half the men there absolutely wild, especially as she gave off vibes that she was willing to ease their pain.  Her brother who drove her home each evening was reputed to have had to wait while Emilie retired to the vines with one of her co-workers.  However the weather was exceptionally good that year and come six o clock it was still well above 20° and the vines had all their leaves so she had a modicum of privacy even if everyone knew exactly what she was doing.  And with whom.

The Mystery of the Discarded Pants…  I feel that this is one that I’ll probably never find the answer to.  I can’t say I’m that sorry.

Made in where?

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cheddar, Cheese

Going to Intermarché this morning I was presented with a large notice stuck to the door.  ‘Arrivage.  Cheddar…’

‘Ooh good!’ thinks me, visions of ploughman’s lunches racing through my head.  What a treat to be able to satisfy that occasional Cheddar craving.

Then I saw the rest of the notice,

Quoi?

Resisting the temptation to do a John McEnroe I went to the cheese counter and asked the assistant if the ‘authentic Cheddar’ was really made in France.

She confirmed it was and I pointed out that in that case it was about as authentic as Brie made in l’Angleterre.  I know that there’s a Somerset Brie but Brie de Meaux it ain’t.  I rest my case.

The assistant looked most surprised to learn that Cheddaire is an English cheese.  Or was, as it seems to be made pretty well everywhere but not, as far as I know, in la belle F up until now.  To be honest French cheesemakers may be the best in the world but they don’t seem to have got the hang of Cheddaire, their version was dry and crumbly and definitely wouldn’t grace any self-respecting  cheese board.  And though it costs 18€ a kilo it tastes like the cheap stuff in packets, quite tasty but not 18€ tasty.  It looks like the master cheese makers in the Cheddar Gorge have much to worry about.

And I’m just so pleased that my friend Mary is in England at the moment and is going to bring me back a lump of proper Cheddar.