DRINK ME!

Just a quick one today because there’s something that I wanted to share. I’ll grant you that, as subjects go,  it’s hardly a very interesting one, and as images go, it’s something that many of you will already be familiar with if you’ve left the house over the past few weeks in dear old Cool Britannia, but what the heck, I kind of liked it, so I thought that I’d “fess up” to the fact, as “da kidz” probably never say…

I’ve just read that first paragraph back and, apart from an obvious failed attempt at being glib, (something I’ve seldom succeeded at), and a ridiculous attempt to use a middle-aged man’s ridiculous notion of what “the language of the streets” might be, there’s that over-optimistic use of the word “many” to describe you, my dear reader, which is, of course, bordering upon the absurd. As we all know, it’s only you and me, my precious, and even if both of us are ever in the same room, we’re hardly likely to ever be going to be thought of as a “crowd...”

But here I am, digressing again, for no good reason other than it gives a lie to that notion of brevity I suggested at the top of the page. Instead I have once again indulged myself in flim-flam and obfuscation and a general air of going around the houses and straying from the path of what could only be considered as being the point.

However, and by way of attempting, however feebly, to come to something at least approaching that very point of which I speak, I was indeed going around the houses when I first noticed the billboard that is, ultimately, our topic for discussion today.

It’s not often that an advertising campaign impresses me any more. After all these years of rotting away on this sad little planet, I tend to think that I’ve pretty much seen everything and that everything else is likely to be a bit of a rehash of something else that somebody did once before, sometimes much better.

So, I was rather surprised when I was driving around a few weeks ago to see a billboard with a poster on it that I actually quite liked, which formed part of the latest campaign for a certain brand of what can only be described as “lager”, a noxious pale golden brew of dubious content that seems to be enjoyed by more than a few of my fellow countrymen and women, usually served chilled.

It’s not that I drink the stuff myself, you understand, and I’m hardly likely to be persuaded otherwise by a bloody great poster overlooking the road, but I did rather like the way they had combined the product with a lager coloured version of the nation’s flag to tie it all together with the country’s expectation of a long, hot summer of parties and sport.

Fat (as they say) chance…! (The long and hot part, anyway. The sport, unfortunately, remains with us whether we like it or not…).

It’s not, I’ll grant you, the most original of ideas, but I did rather like the execution of it. It had a subtlety that I rather admired and wouldn’t normally expect from that particular company and, you know, I just rather liked the image, and, because I had absolutely nothing else I could think of to share with you today, I thought that I would tell you so. I do know, however, that by merely talking about a “grown-up” thing like an alcoholic drink, I might very well be breaking the vow that I made when setting up these tales of Lesser Blogfordshire, that I wouldn’t include “adult content” but I’m hoping that you’ll forgive me, just this once. After all, this is strictly between you and me, isn’t it...?

Feeling a bit thirsty now… I wonder why that is…?