This comes from my last post to my technophobe thread. Hoe-kay-ee, this is how it goes ...

1. Take a trip to Tesco, Purley, Boringly Sarf of London
2. Give loud shriek of excitement and run to fetch camera from car. No, not because there's a Bogof offer on all things cheese related, or some such, but because the Toast marketing board are actually IN THE CARPARK, an Our World carpark, shamelessly promoting their product via the thin disguise of Kingsmill Bakeries PLC. Who, of course, are Spec Ops infiltrators from the TMB. They give the game away by having the word TOAST in very large letters above their bank of operating toasters (and toasting operatives), practically force feeding the product to any shopper fool enough to wonder what the fuss is all about.

3. Take photos as proof, muttering 'For the fforum,' to the guy collecting trolleys, who is giving me an odd look. It's broad daylight, in a public place, and I'm using a Polaroid camera, which could be why. He probably thinks I've got a Toast ffetish, or something.

4. Eventually, after several weeks (and a fair few attempts), get round to posting to the forum to say okay, I give up, how DO I send this proof into cyberspace?

5. Get a very informative response back from PrinzHilde, with step-by-step instructions on what to do, including a 'sample' pic of what my photo would look like if clicked on from the forum (just for size, clarity etc)

6. PZ's picture is of the word TOAST.

It gets better.
Question: why, this week of all weeks, did I suddenly get it into my head to spend an inordinate amount of time on this fforum, on this subject, when I've got so much else to do, like update my CV, book a place on a training course etc? Okay, don't answer that, but:

It's Christmas, right? Time to go shopping for prezzies. Which means books galore for everyone. Remembering my local big store is @#$%& than
Waterpebbles - if a little more restricted for choice - and that it also sells mince pies, as well as Kingsmill Toast loaves, I head there.

The manager is obviously a big reader - or knows his customers well - because a surprisingly large portion of the first floor is given over to books. So much so, they are even divided into sections, including sci-fi/fantasy. I'm actually after Dr Who novelisations for my kids, but blow me down if there's not the complete works of Jasper Fforde up there as well! I mean, two shelves worth. Even their Terry Pratchett section is less endowed, and there's no other fantasy humour up there at all.

I decide this store is worthy of a big gong on the fforum - another new thread is in the offing. My last posts/threads have all been based around the Toast story.

The 'book' store is, of course, Tescos.

Before you say 'Ah, well, evidently that car park attendant passed the message on to his boss, along the lines of: "There's a weird woman in the carpark taking Polaroids of the Toast wagon, muttering about Ffordes. And besides that, it's not a Ford, it's a Bedford," thus leading the manager to make further inquiries and discover the wonders of a hitherto unknown (to him) prodigy, the store I went to last night was Tesco at Gatwick, not Purley. Separated by at least 20 miles of roadworks.

Up to last night, the only places I had seen JF books were Smiffs and Waterpebbles. Of course, Jasper 'plugs' Tesco a lot in his books, but I'd put money on that NOT being the reason for two independant managers introducing Toast to the punters, or giving more shelf space to Jazzer's books than any other author - sci-fi or otherwise.

Unless, of course, you know different. Comments from all Tesco staff currently reading this post, please.

In the meantime, seeing as how the colouring competition was such a success, here's another creative idea. Say that your rice and lentils DID suddenly start flauting the rules of entropy and causal reality - what sort of patterns/pictures would they make? We could glue our ideas on to card and post them to this site. Christmassy ones would be appropriate, I feel.
Which comes back to using a scanner and the problems it would cause for technophobes. Which is where I came in, I believe.

Someone give this lass some red cordial!

Good work :)

What is Tescos? Is it Wal-Mart? I am pretty sure and I'm not going to go look it up. It's Wal-Mart, right?

I hardly ever go into Wal-Mart, but every time I do, I love it.

Jazz, I've got about 6 girls under 12 coming over here this weekend, and I have laid in a stock of elmer's glue, rice, lentils, etc. We shall be creating.

In the UK Wal-Mart is Asda, except when it is Wal-Mart. Tesco is also Wal-Mart in substance but not in fact. And Safeway is Morrisons, except when it is Safeway. Waitrose is John Lewis and Ocado when it's on-line unless you are on the Waitrose site. And then there's Sainsbury's which is a promotional arm of the Jamie Oliver empire, and Co-op which had the idea for talking bees before Bee Movie. Iceland is a store and not a country and Aldi can sometimes sound like Audi, depending on the speaker, which gets confusing when someone returns with groceries and not a new car.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

Walmart is evil. My roommate and I have a theory that Walmart, with Starbucks on its right hand, and Apple on its left, will soon make a move to uncover their doomsday device and take over the world. You'll see. It starts off as a Wal-apple-bucks conglomerate, and soon, they change their name to Goliath. Then we're in trouble.

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You kids with your long hair and Baroque music...

I'm a bit proud to say that when Wal-Mart tried to expand to Germany a few years ago, they soon had to admit that their shops did not work out. Apparently they lost like 3 Billion Euros in the process.

And at this time, I don't have any lentils in my kitchen, so I can't really talk about coincidences. I'll buy some tomorrow and report back.

So where do Woolies and Coles fit into this? I'm certain they are part of the Legions of Darkness...

One word: Unilever.

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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Well it seems that Col-unnings and Safeway/Woolies are keep the multi-national bad guys out, but only to make sure that no-one comes and takes away their nice juicy duopoly. They have definitely learnt the lessons that the big guys have been teaching - the big own-brands push is a real worry. It all looks like a noce bargain now but as the marginal brands get pushed out then they will really cash-in. Just look at the petrol station set-up in Aus now, all very cozy. An entry by Tesco or the much rumoured Marks & Sparks entry could be a ggod thing.

In reply to Martin.........)

Ahh! Is that the one lever that Archimedes wanted?

(or perhaps the S.A. name for the gearshift in a Unimog?)



edited 'cos Cannibalrabbit got in before I hit the enter key

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2007 09:50AM by SkidMarks.

OK, now I'm confused- should I expect to see Jim Morrison in a Woolie Safeway in Iceland?

Sounds almost like a new twist on Clue...

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Signature or shameless self-promotion?
You decide:

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No, but you might see Bjork.

Um.... Unilever own about anything you want to buy in SA. They own at least two competing washing powders for example.

www.unilever.co.za

I think they are international too.

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

I'm telling my dad about that Safeway thing. He thought they were the good guys...

Martin,

Unilever used to be Lever Bros and Kitchen in the previous century and somewhere along the way - post WW2 I think - they changed the name. It was/?is a British company. It goes back to the 19th century at least.

Lord Leverhulme bought the Millais' picture named 'Little Girl in a new Dress' and retitled it 'Its so clean' and it was used in the Lever soap commercials for about a hundred years or so.

See? Good candidates then.

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

I liked the Coppertone girl. Used to be you could see billboards with her little dog pulling her bathing suit down to show her tan line. I thought those billboards were cute. Today they are anathema, and yet, the bathing suits the little girls wear are much more revealing than that...

Hehe! I get to see Bjork without going to Iceland ^_^ Yay!

It does niggle me that Coles and Safe/woo are so prominent in this country, I do like smaller places.