[post formerly at the old Found Objects but reconstituted in honor of Britain's greatest footballer, Sir Bobby Charlton, RIP- and a great comb-over owner]
One thing I've noticed on my visits back to England over the last few years--you will never see a comb over anymore.
They used to be the mark of male middle age.
Bus conductors, men in betting shops, famous footballers, TV quiz presenters.... half the teachers at my school.... they all had comb overs.
At some point sense prevailed and the balding started to shave down their side tufts to near invisible.
Much more dignified (did they really think they were fooling anybody, the comb over squad?)... no need for yucky hair cream to plaster thinning elongated strands across the pate... and unlike the comb over invulnerable to the elements or a football colliding off the bonce.
However one side effect is that walking through a crowded public space in the U.K. today, it can feel like there's a lot of aging, getting-stout skinheads about.
What passes for a chilly morning in Southern California (I've grown soft). So I made some porridge for breakfast.
Felt like there was a small bonfire in my belly for an hour or so later.
Reminded me of these cosy-yet-eerie commercials for Ready Brek oatmeal from back in the day.
They were eerier still in my memory, because I pictured them in black-and-white (but I guess that's only because we had a black-and-white TV - as did the majority of the British population then, still)
This washed-out looking one resembles my memory version more closely.
Perhaps some of the "eerie" is the faint suggestion of radioactivity - like this one lucky breakfast-protected kid is also somehow the solitary victim of post-nuclear fallout.
Ah, they carried them on well into the 1980s, here adding some hip hop breakdancing / bodypopping / moonwalk-glide "hepness" to the mix. Nicely juxtaposed with one of those gasometers.
I assume this 2020 refix is one of those retro-commercials where they bring back the fondly-remembered template for nostalgic reasons. Here the pitch has been expanded from "Central heating for kids" to "Central heating for everyone"
I should imagine part of the success of the original ad campaign - alongside its appeal to mums, the idea of protecting your child from the elements in your absence, like an invisible blanket of TLC, or internal hug even - part of it must have been because central heating was a relatively recent thing, with many UK home getting it for the first time. (An alternate pitch could have been Double Glazing for Kids, or Loft Insulation for Kids).
We never got central heating - our new-built estate house may have been one of the last built in the 1960s that didn't routinely have it as a fixture. Instead, we had a coal fireplace, which in the dead of winter became something the entire family huddled around. (We also had a coal shed, which wasn't big enough, so the whole side bit of the house was covered in a giant mound of coal, delivered by the Coal Board. Increasingly, wood from fallen trees supplemented the fuel).
We also had an electric bar that was stuck bizarrely quite high up on the wall of adjoining room, most of the heat from which shot straight to the ceiling uselessly. There was also a freestanding two-bar electric fire that could be moved around the house where needed - temporary possession of which was fought over jealously. It was around this orange-glowing device that I curled myself - after the trauma of dashing from the bathtub across a draughty landing to my bedroom - in an attempt to absorb as much of the warmth emitted as possible.
I don't remember ever having a hot breakfast - certainly nothing like porridge.
We were shunted out into the world, walking to school no matter the weather - snow, fog, frost, bucketing rain. Clad in shorts all year round, until the age of 14!
For some reason, children were not given umbrellas in those days. Not something you saw - a kid holding an umbrella. (Some kids had garments with hoods, like a parka -not me though). Many a school morning, I can remember sitting, dripping, in my desk, vapour-ripples of steam rising off my drenched uniform.
