New, Really New

New, Really New ©

By Michael Casey

In game shows you can Take the Money or Open the Box, Michael Miles and Monika Rose may spring to mind if you are even older than me. If you Google you’ll discover sad facts about them, so the memory I’ve had for over 50 years has a cloud over it now. But I won’t dwell on it, nobody should dwell on sad things, that’s why we all like New things.

In advertising New is the buzz word, and game shows and sagas were introduced to sell Soap, washing powders in USA. The Soaps sponsored shows. You can Google away with that for yourself. You may even have a degree in the subject, Marketing as it is called nowadays. If money is involved everybody wants the biggest share of the market after all. Which brings me to, New, what is New? Brand New, is better than just New, how about New and Improved, and with added Value for Money. Is it real, or just some idiot with a half a dictionary?

Marketing folks are trying to grab our attention, so words are showered on products, especially stuff you use in the shower. We all want to look nice and smell nice, well girls do anyway. Hence the shower of buzz words to promote use of products used in the bathroom. This will leave your hair soft and shiny and with added bounce. We all believe it and try the product, though personally I use carbolic soap on my head and lower down my body, and I still have great soft thick silvery hair. Don’t you hate me girls? It’s all in the carbolics after all, or genes if you did biology.

And on it goes in an effort to gain a bit more market share, it is a billion pound industry after all. That’s why I’m on posters everywhere, advertising my carbolics, or rather carbolic soaps. So, YOU too can have such really great hair. Advertising is a very deal, it used to be on hoardings, I once applied for a job to do with hoardings, checking that posters were up in the right place at the right time. Yes really. See what a many splendored life I’ve had, or nearly had, as I didn’t get that job. Nowadays there are niche adverts, as you wouldn’t sell ham to Muslims or Jews, so you target what a specific audience might want, so you decide who might want what you have to sell and spend your budget appropriately. The student market drinks more, has more sex and uses more technology, or so they think. So, adverts on posters near universities are for STD clinics and bars, and flash new phones. And if you weren’t using flash photography while drunk making that “advertising” video with your girlfriends then you wouldn’t need the STD clinic, but at least there is a map on the poster.

When you graduate, or rather when you discover just how much that piece of paper called a Degree cost you, then you may decide it was a waste of your time and money. Especially as everything was Online, and you could have stayed home with your nagging mom and dad, but cut your debt in half, for the same piece of paper. But you really wanted to live it up in squalid housing with dodgy people and their new diseases, at the other end of the country, just to prove how independent you really are. Besides you are a grown up now and can comb  your own hair, and wipe your own bottom, with cheap toilet paper that your finger always goes through.

Which means you need a new suit, so you flick through the mags in the barbers, as you need a new haircut for your first interview. The barber asks what kind of cut you want, you say you have an interview. So, he gives you a short back and sides, or the same haircut Michael Casey has been having for 50 years. You look at the barber with a mixture or hate, you’d punch him, but he’s even fatter than Michael Casey, so you smile a pained smile and say “thanks”. The barber looks at his palm, you didn’t tip him, though you did want to leave him at a tip, him and his clippers.

You have torn a page from his magazine, the picture of the suit that’ll be perfect for you is displayed, worn by a male model, with a decent haircut. Accidentally on purpose slamming the door, that’s taped as the glass in it is already cracked, you leave, with “mind the door” ringing in your ears. Up the road is Steers the old suit shop, only they don’t have the suit in the stolen picture from the barbers. Though the assistant does have the same haircut and he says “nice haircut” as you arrive. Time is short, it’s a Saturday afternoon and the interview is first thing on Monday, you are cornered, so you take whatever fits, or almost fits. But the price is right, so come on down. And the trousers do, as they are both too long and too big, but the assistant has a nice brand new fake leather belt. So you have to buy a belt, and reject the offer of braces as  you just detest braces.

So scalped, and wearing a clown’s trousers you arrive at the Estate Agents for your interview. At least your marketing degree will be useful there, and there is a ubiquitous large chested girl working on reception, she might get lucky, as you preen your scalped head. Only nothing is as it seems. You are invited into a small back office, a man in a track suit is there, with a fat girl also in a track suit besides him, and yes she is wearing braces, and any kind of haircut would be better than her hair is right now. A 2^nd man arrives, all suited and booted, he IS an estate agent, you look hopefully at him. It’s ok, Don and Debbie will be interviewing you, I’m just doing them a favour, the use of an office.  

Don owns 7 chip shops and 6 pizza parlours and 4 nail bars, nail bars were Debbie’s idea for diversification. Obviously with a growing property portfolio, NEW NEW Estate agents were happy to lend an office. So, the job is all about food and nails, never mix them together joked Debbie. You’ll get food for life from any eatery we own, and we are expanding all the time, and I’ll sort out all your beauty needs said Debbie looking with disgust at your bitten nails. Never bite your nails, it’s the very first thing people spot, when they shake hands. And there will be company transport provided too. The pay’s alright, but you do well and we all do well. And if you strike gold, you can marry Debbie, jokes Don. You almost faint, the room spins around, but you do notice Debbie’s eye’s look down for a second, there is sadness there.

You take the job and start the very next day, Debbie has tidied her hair and put red lipstick on, but she still is wearing a fat loose track suit, and the dreaded braces. Well you job is marketing and we’ll be working closely together, but first allow me. With that she grabs your hand and applies DO NOT BITE on all your fingers, it’s disgusting, you will never bite your nails ever again. Her grip is very strong, yet her hands are ever so soft. Then she grabs your other hand and does that one too. Now, that’s better, let’s find the company transport. It turns out to be a Tandem, a retired one from the Olympics, state of the art, they bought it on Ebay.

How do you think we deliver the leaflets? So you are to cycle behind a fat  creature and deliver leaflets. It’s better than jogging everywhere, but you have a degree in Marketing. You’ll be sat around her fat arse all day. You close your eyes, and she begins to strip off. She is wearing a fat suit under the track suit, it’s a NEW way of toning and losing weight, underneath she is a very pretty woman, beyond lust.  And she says her braces are coming off next week. So now you have to endure her sat on the front seat of a tandem, you cannot avert your eyes, just her wonder thighs and more. It’s a relief to jump off and sprint up and down streets delivering, buy one get one half price pizza, with a coupon for 10% off the nail bar for your own adorable fat, pizza fat girlfriends.

And that is how you met your future wife, Don wasn’t joking, he wanted her to be happy as his veins clogged from all the fast food. Debbie wasn’t stupid, and her own chest was even bigger than the girl from the estate agent’s, she was all curves, and she has not one but two degrees. She was tempted to do a Phd, then she’s be a Doctor of Chips Pizza and Nails. You found all this out as you cycled behind her, well watching her behind.

It wasn’t easy, she made you learn all about nails too, she even made you take a nail technicians course. Then you had to learn how to make fish and chips and pizza too. She was a very hard task master, you had to be as good as her dad , and as good as her too, and only then were you good enough. By which time  your leg muscles were rock solid from all the tandem riding.

Now what has this all got to do with new? Well nothing really, sometimes as good as new is good enough. Or with a new hair cut you are as good as new, even while wearing a clown suit. The thing that you need to improve the most is yourself, once you do that anything is possible. And Debbie insisted on the impossible, you had to have your nails done in every room of every shop of her dad’s empire in the space of one month. And by having your nails done, Debbie didn’t mean have your nails done, she meant have your nails done. Or perhaps you need 2 degrees and her newly won PhD, to explain it, as she paints your nails.