When I was a tad younger, one of my guiding literary lights was Jerome K Jerome who, apart from being very funny, had a stunning ability to put life into perspective. I quote from
Three Men in a Boat: 'Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing'.
Jerome's advice came to mind this week when I was in our attic. In piles of varying sizes lay the lumber. Boxes of Matchbox model cars, stamp albums, a son's collection of comics, three robots, 60 years of family photographs and negatives, and scattered everywhere football, rugby and theatre programmes.
At one time, I and a splendid lady named Marjorie produced the international match programmes for Scottish Rugby Union. We also helped Schweppes become the first commercial sponsor the fiercely amateur SRU would accept. As a result, rugby programmes became part of my life. A later involvement with the 1991 Rugby World Cup brought a shedload more.
Theatre programmes came from an early exposure to Gilbert and Sullivan, through a youthful love affair with Five Past Eight variety in Glasgow and Edinburgh, on to the Edinburgh Festival, and concluding with glorious Friday and Saturday nights in London when we drove round theatreland, finding last-minute returned seats for a show, and wallowing in everything from
Cats to
Daisy Pulls the Strings. And now they lay in piles. My lumber.
An ignoble thought slid into mind. Could this lumber be transformed to gold? Were my collections a way to meet the threat of a looming energy bill? Down from the attic and onto the internet. Websites dealing with sporting memorabilia, rugby relics, and more. Two days of tapping and awaiting replies. Finally, the truth. My lumber is a mirror of many other lives and, as a result, commonplace. So I will follow Jerome K's advice. Out with the rubbish it will go. The local skip will bulge with my useless memories. Or perhaps not. If I put them away, carefully, in the attic perhaps, one day in the future...
David Donald
The smell of the past evoked last week by
Mary Simpson brought back some memories – like tackity boots which we wore because they lasted and could be handed on to the next child. In fact, all small boys wore them from poor families or not. I don't come from the same background but if the poor suffered, the lower middle classes in small towns knew all about cutting costs, handing clothes down from one child to the next, making their own dresses and needing to scrimp and save.
My parents had one wardrobe with a his side and a hers side – my father had a work suit, a Sunday suit, a dinner suit – they did go to dances – and a morning suit for funerals and special occasions. But that was it. I have three wardrobes and a rack filled with shirts plus a chest of drawers and enough sweaters to mean I could go six weeks without repetition.
There were children at school who were poorly dressed and often had nits, the ones your mother did not want you to have anything to do with, like the farm labourer's family who lived a mile or so away in a but and ben. The Findlaters were, of course, perfectly all right to know. But not the McIvers. They did not get invited to the family barn dances.
The street I live in now was once working class – when I moved there some 40-odd years ago, my neighbours were a bus conductor, a plumber and electrician – now they are in the professions, do yoga and acupuncture, holiday in the Far East or Florida, have more than one clearly not second-hand car and send their children to school in school uniforms. When I was at school, uniforms, like bananas, we believed in but had never seen.
The street has gone up in the world and is full of people who are spending money building extensions in the back garden or adding an extra floor to houses which all have two lavatories. There is no smell of poverty but the street Whatsapp is full of recycling suggestions, offers of outgrown toys and children's clothes – an easier way of disposing the useable but unwanted than trudging to a charity shop. In other words, making ends meet still exists.
Bill Russell
I was out for lunch with a couple of ex-colleagues last Friday. It was not the well-established, regular meeting with the group of ex-civil servants, who on closure of our office in the mid-2000s were dispersed to the four winds. No, this was with people stretching from much further back in my career. Back to when I first undertook what was to become my daily journey, to the big brutalist structure, situated behind the castle, in the big city.
It was really lovely to meet and chat about old times as we ate and recalled stories, some no doubt embellished or part improvised due to the passage of time. We left with a shake of the hand and promised to do it all again soon. As I left the venue and headed back to my workplace, I was approached by a
Big Issue seller, who regaled me with the request, 'Please buy my first copy today', further informing me that they had been on the stump for a few hours with no success in shifting any magazines. How could I refuse? I handed over my contribution and wished the vendor well. It was turning into a good day.
A few years ago now, I was studying for my MCIPS professional qualification in procurement, through one of the Glasgow colleges, where a diverse and interesting syllabus contained among other subjects, strategic and tactical approaches to buying as a business/institution, along with legal aspects governing procurement. However, the area that brought most debate and consternation between lecturer and students was the loose 'science' of marketing. I say science, but our lecturer held it almost as in the realms of an art form, such was his declared passion and enthusiasm for the subject.
I admire commitment and dedication to one's chosen field of expertise, however, I prefer when that passion is supported by deep and fundamental knowledge, or at least the ability to mount and sustain an argument stating your position around the subject. I must declare that this learning happened in the early part of the 21st century and no doubt approaches to the subject will have changed, perhaps even dramatically.
One of the key strategies we discussed was a relatively new to the UK market, though now well known ice-cream manufacturer. It had confused consumers by initially presenting as a luxury high-end product whilst almost simultaneously diversifying by selling through supermarkets and negating their initial pitch. In the lecturer's eyes, this was a no–no as a marketing strategy and one doomed to failure. All of which seemed logical until you considered a very similar effort by a Belgian lager running around the same time, which almost identically mirrored the ice-cream campaign and whose product was now outselling the next four brands combined. The lecturer was not best pleased when presented with this information and we never really got to a proper understanding of what constituted good marketing.
Getting back to the
Big Issue seller, what I did not tell you was that I gifted them a contribution in lieu of the magazine, in the hope they might be able to sell on the one I did not take. As I walked away, but within hearing distance, I heard the now familiar call out: 'Please buy my first copy today'. I laughed as the penny dropped. So this was honest, effective marketing.
Frank Eardley
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