Things I have learned over the last few days

(Because lists are cool and you know it!)

I don't know nearly as much about grammar as I thought I did.
I always thought I was pretty good at grammar. English has always been a strong subject for me, but on Tuesday when my English teacher asked us to insert relative and non-finite clauses into a sentence, I had to admit that I had NOT A CLUE what she was talking about. And she's the kind of scary teacher you don't want to get things wrong in front of. Thankfully no one else seemed to know what she was on about either. *phew*

My university SUCKS at organising timetables.
Rewind to September, when we received this year's timetable. Straightaway we realised there were clashes. My course is made up of about 120 people (was 150 but the drop-out rate is quite high) so we are divided into 5 'A' groups of - now - around 25 people. We stay with the same group in every subject throughout our three years except for in our specialism subject, for which we are mixed up with people from other groups.

I specialise in English - despite my abysmal grasp of grammar - and so do a lot of people. So there are two English groups. So we noticed in September that one of the English groups clashed with one of our core curriculum subjects. I mentioned it to my tutor and she said they were aware and it would be resolved. So I went off to do my school placement and then just after Christmas we received an email with a revised timetable on it that had moved the English groups. However, there was now a clash for one of the other A groups. In the end we received a message that we would all meet as one English group (over 30 people, really too many for one group). So last Thursday we did. But the tutor passed around a sheet to indicate which day we could do - Wednesday or Thursday and said they'd try and see if they could arrange two groups.

So yesterday I figured there was no English seminar as I assumed we were still meeting as one group. Plus there was a meeting timetabled for the beginning of today's English seminar that everyone had to attend. However, we bumped into our tutor yesterday morning and she said there was, in fact, an English group scheduled for yesterday afternoon. There were 4 of us who actually turned up for it, plus 5 foreign exchange students. And I still had to go in this morning for the meeting. All in all: total nightmare.

The words to the 1989 Milky Way advert
Courtesy of Ali's mad YouTube searching skillz!
The red car and the blue car had a race,
All red wants to do is stuff his face
He eats everything he sees from trucks to prickly trees
But smart old blue he took the Milky Way
He's looking for a chocolate treat, fluffy and light
'Cause he knows it won't spoil his appetite (mmm, mmm, mmm)
Oh no! The bridge has gone!
Old red can't carry on.
But smart old blue he took the Milky Way.

Wind is seriously scary!

There are some crazy-ass weather conditions going on over here. Look what happened to my neighbour's fence:

The wind has taken on a mind of its own. All afternoon I've heard it howling around the buildings searching for things to blow over. On the road earlier I could feel my car being pushed to one side of the road (unless there is just something ELSE wrong with my car, which really, enough already!).

Commercial Breakdown Part II

Apart from the fact that my televisual viewing is now swamped by irritatingly saccharine scenes of children rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning to gleefully tear the wrapping off some highly overrated toy and every shop promising the lowest prices, there are a couple of adverts that are irritating the snot out of me right now. And I just can't keep it in any more. Something has to be said:

Kerry. Kerry, Kerry, Kerry. Please get off my screen. You may have won I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, but frankly, who cares? I would rather scratch my own eyes out with a pencil than have to witness another painful explanation of why "mums go to Iceland". I guess we all love a good trainwreck and you amply provided such after your split from Brian McFadden, but watching you exercise your somewhat limited acting abilities over a pack of buy-one-get-one-free spring rolls is like actually climbing inside said trainwreck and stepping dismissively over the strewn bodies.

It's fine for Jamie Oliver to promote Sainsbury's. It makes sense - he's a chef. And Prunella Scales did a good job for Tesco a few years back as that amusing yet slightly irritating mother-in-law. But Kerry, nothing puts me off shopping in Iceland more than your nasally whine and apparent orgasms over the stocky guy in overalls who delivers your weekly shop in his "cool van". (Just FYI, Kerry, a van that has Iceland emblazoned on the side - not exactly a hot set of wheels.)

Bottom line, Kerry, you just don't pull off the down-to-earth mum that Iceland seems to want to present. Instead you come across as a desperate wannabe who had her 15 minutes of fame, did her time in rehab and now will do anything to stay on TV. Please, just stop.

The other ad that makes my flesh want to crawl off my body is for Bisto's new cooking sauces. I get what they're trying to do. It's a fact that not nearly enough British families sit down for a meal together regularly. And I do believe that a lot of the problems in our society stem from the family. I don't believe, however, that coming together over a pot of chicken and Bisto sauce is going to cure society's ills. The various children's voiceovers talking about how they want "Dad home from werrrrk, on time" and "Our holideh in Majorceh" grate like nails on a blackboard and the whole thing comes across as completely patronising. Because we never realised that families were supposed to eat together. Thank you Bisto, we could never have figured that out on our own. Please tell us more. Any ideas on the war in Iraq?

Commercial Breakdown

Since childhood I’ve always loved adverts. I would demonstrate a wider knowledge of TV commercials than the programmes they dissected. My grandad was in the industry, owning his own advertising partnership, so maybe this influenced my televison viewing, but I never nurtured an interest in entering the industry myself. I don't think I really have the creativity for it anyway. I am creative, but not in that way.

I like ads – good ads anyway. I like the way they can influence our thinking and persuade us of things we might never have thought.

On holiday a few weeks ago I was complaining about the current Skechers advert, a ‘Real World’ type set up where one housemate steals another’s Skechers and then accidentally damages them by leaving them too close to the water’s edge whilst making out with his girlfriend on the beach. It’s simply irritating – badly acted and pointless. A friend of mine questioned my complaint. “But you remember it though?”

“Yes, but it’s annoying.”

“But if you remember it, then it achieved its purpose.”

But I disagree. I may remember the advert, and personally, I am a fan of Skechers anyway, but even though I remember it, it DOES NOT make me want to buy a pair. It makes me want to poke toothpicks under the fingernails of the ‘actors’ in order to teach them a lesson about the pain their bad acting causes the general public.

The best adverts are not only memorable, but memorably GOOD. I can still recall with warmth the Milky Way advert that featured the cartoon and the little song about how “the red car and the blue car had a race.” And how old was I then? 10? But wasn't it great? I remain convinced that Milky Ways are far superior as an in-between-meals-snack choice than all that scrap metal the red car ate!

There are some abysmal adverts out now, such as the aforementioned Skechers one, but there are also some that I really love. Good adverts can be like mini-treats between TV shows, as interesting, exciting or amusing as any full-length programme. At the moment I’m loving the Quinn’s advert. Funnily enough, I’m not too bothered about sampling the product itself, but let’s face it, at the end of the day it is just another alco-pop. But the commercial itself is a pleasure to watch, particularly the longer version you get at the cinema. The poem and the graphics of the plants coming alive are beautifully Lewis Carroll-like, which I love, by the way, and the gravelly-voiced American woman who reads the words is an absolute pleasure to listen to – her voice has the kind of timbre that sends shivers down the spine. I could watch it over and over again, captured by the fairy-world hidden deep in the undergrowth where this product ‘grows’.

Another fantastic advert right now is the Mint credit card one. The Mint adverts have always been good, but the current ones are brilliant. Apparently for every clever thing that happens in the world, a very stupid one must happen to balance it out. So on one side of the world we see a man opening an envelope containing his new Mint card, offering 0% on purchases blah blah blah. So conversely, on the other side of the world, a woman is cleaning her patio doors and she walks up to the next window, leans forward to wipe it and falls through the open door. The first time I saw it I laughed out loud.

I'm wary of credit cards because I have one and it's mostly maxed out although I try to save it for emergencies (emergencies being, OMG I need that pair of shoes from that website and they don't accept Maestro), but if I was getting a credit card, I'd so get a Mint one. Or an Egg one 'cause those guinea pigs? Hilarious!