toast and tescos and too many coincidences!
Posted by:
Jazz_Sue (212.85.12.---)
Date: December 13, 2007 01:54PM
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.