Fly The Friendly Skies

To date I have earned approx half a US dollar from advertising on househusbandnot. I have absolutely no idea how this revenue is calculated. Although it is amusing to see what products the ad people think househusbandnot readers may be interested in: home delivered meals, wedding dress cleaning, Bournemouth hen weekends, patio pet doors for less, and glass door coolers (No, me neither). There was one for commercial refrigeration too, which is how they store old adverts I guess.

Three of my best friends work in advertising. (In fact one of them also starred in an advert recently, dressed as a Buddhist monk to sell kitchen towels.) These three advertising executives - aka biggest blaggers I know - fly around the world asking people what they like and telling them what they should like. They spend a lot of money on research and focus groups and expensive socks. And then they head to the commercial refrigerator and pull out the one with the girl coming out of the sea in a bikini or the grannies dancing to rap music. They tell me this is because all the really new and creative ideas get binned by the client. I say, bring on the cute puppy and save everyone a lot of money. (The best advert I ever saw was a hand-written sign in a scruffy pub window in Stockwell. It read "Cheap Beer Here Now".)

Most advertising passes me by. I buy either what my mother used to buy or what my wife tells me to buy. I am sure a quick look in our kitchen cupboards or in our fridge would tell the advertising people something else, and that I am a BCD 1 with aspirations to being an AB 3 or something. But I don't think so. I am just a househusbandnot with an aspiration of getting through the day without sawing any of my limbs off.

In other news, we went to an ape rescue centre this weekend. I learned that gibbons sing at you if you venture into their territory, that Malagasy monkeys love nectar, that Lemur means ghost in Madagascar, and that chimps live in fission fusion communities. And we saw a group of Stump-tailed Macaques that had been rescued from testing labs. Some of them had lived for 25 years but never seen the sky before they arrived at the centre.

I guess I should be concluding with some arch comment about how much it costs to sponsor a monkey at the rescue centre compared to how much Nike or Marlboro spend on advertising in a week. But, unlike advertisers, I don't want to repeat stuff you already know. You know the deal.

(Hmmm, bit serious today. Must go to the shop and get a can of that limited edition *epsi max with a lemon and lime twist.)