RETROWURST: Rauchen verboten November 2007

 

For this year’s birthday party, I decided to make it non-smoking, at least indoors. A first for me. And it all went pretty well. The smokers were OK with standing outside when they wanted a ciggie and my clothes and our cellar bar didn’t stink to high heaven the next day. 

I’ve definitely become less tolerant of smoke, and perhaps it's no wonder - the ban on smoking in public has been in force for 18 years now. Here are my thoughts on lighting up and liberty in general from back then.

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We have now had just over a month of smoke-free Hessen. The smoking ban in public places came in here on 1^stOctober 2007 and, now that the cold weather is upon us, it’s worth taking a look at how this is going so far and at the topic of personal liberty generally in Germany.

 

Around 25% of Germans claim to be regular smokers, with an additional 4% as “occasionals”. I haven’t any up-to-date figures, but I believe this is slightly higher than the UK. Smoking is more prevalent amongst men (35%) than women (22%) and amongst manual workers, lorry and bus drivers (52%!) than amongst professionals such as doctors, pharmacists and teachers (a mere 18%). Again, similar to the UK, the percentage of smokers is falling but this seems due to more people in their 30s, 40s and 50s giving up rather than less young people starting. Teenage smoking, especially among girls, is still a social issue here.

 

The smoking ban, due to the governmental structure here, was carried out in a piecemeal fashion, in contrast to the UK. Each of the Länder had its own date and policy for the smoking ban and even now, there are different rules and regulations should I drive 15 km southwards to Bayern.

 

The other huge difference to the UK was the “low key” way that the ban was brought in and enforced. There was no expensive multi-media campaign heralding the ban and you would be pushed to find one beermat, sticker or sign in a Hessich pub or restaurant with Rauchen Verboten, or similar. Indeed, you may even find that the restaurant still has a room for smokers which seems to be allowable under the rules. And even if there is no place in the restaurant for a quick smoke, you are likely to find a pavilion and benches outside, complete with giant electric heaters. The result of this is that smokers have accepted the ruling rather better than they have in the UK. There is a feeling that they have been treated like adults and are responding like adults. The ban was announced matter-of-factly in the media, without a huge build-up or constant niggling to make smokers feel put-upon or militant. Of course, there have been mutterings and grumblings by the electric heaters but overall, one feels that people have accepted that this is now the way of the world.

 

Overall, there seems to be a less hysterical attitude to smoking in Germany than in the UK. Children can still buy “sweet cigarettes” here and cigarette vending machines are a more frequent sight than post boxes. It was only at the beginning of this year that these were fitted with a credit-card identity check; last year, anyone who was tall enough or resourceful enough could buy cigarettes at any time of the day or night. And smokers are rarely vilified as they are in the UK. The ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt frequently appears on television, pooh-poohing global warming while chain-smoking for Germany, although I must admit that I haven’t seen him since the ban!

 

I am not particularly pro or anti-smoking: after all, some of my best friends smoke! But it does occur to me that in Germany, there seems rather less hysterical telling us what we can and can’t do than in the UK. Or, rather, perhaps this is a more recent development in the UK which one simply doesn’t notice here as it has always been the case. If we take something like food labeling, I am freshly amazed each time I buy something in a UK supermarket as to how many warnings, stamps and “dos and don’ts” can fit onto a small label, from “may contain traces of nuts” to “part of your 5-a-day.” We have very, very little of this in Germany. This is partly because there is less packaging. If I buy apples, I’ll probably buy them loose and decide for myself whether they are “perfect for lunchboxes”. Or I’m pretty sure that the cheese that I buy from the cheese counter will contain milk, so I won’t be force-feeding it to anyone who has a dairy allergy. Most of my friends who are vegetarian are clever enough to work out what fits in their diet without those little green symbols everywhere.

 

The other reason is that people are treated as responsible adults here. There are no speed limits on the Autobahnsoutside built-up areas as people are expected to drive responsibly and there don’t seem to be more accidents here than anywhere else. In general, on the roads, there are less signs and road-markings and certainly nothing of the jokey “don’t be dirty, stick to thirty” variety. Although Germany has more than its fair share of petty rules and regulations, these tend not to be screamed at you from every roof top. Once you know what the rules are, you know who is responsible. End of story. So, if you slip on the ice in front of my house because I couldn’t be bothered to grit it, my insurance has to pay your medical bill. I am responsible and that’s clear. It probably won’t go through the courts.

 

Of course, the main reason that the nanny state hasn’t taken over in Germany is that they’ve been there and done that, as we all know. Being told what to do, how to behave and what to think by the state is something that Germans have had more than enough of. Perhaps the government in the UK should pause to think where it might all end.

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It’s difficult to get hold of comparable stats, but my best estimate is that the % of smokers in Germany (regular or occasional) has fallen from 29% to 22.7% in the last eighteen years. The decrease is more marked amongst men (35% to 25.7%) than women (22% to 19.6%).

Of course, during this time we’ve seen the rise of cigarette/tobacco alternatives from vapes and shishas to legalised cannabis. And cigarette vending machines still grace many a pavement. 

But there are clear signs of the Nanny State stomping into adults’ lives with food labelling and packaging, media and manufacturer band-waggoning on Veganuary, Sober October and whatever all those virtue-signalling months are called. I have even tried alcohol-free wine. It was nasty.

I think Covid has a lot to answer for.

At least it hasn’t got quite to the absurd stage that the UK has reached. In almost every restaurant we went to on our last visit, we were “greeted” with “any allergies?” before the waiter had even said hello to us. 

BREXILE: Never Turn Back

 

Unlike this sleepy swing, things are moving pretty damn quickly with the Brexile plans. Quicker than I would have liked, ideally - I have accepted an offer on my house. The last few nights have been as good as sleepless, wondering What On Earth Have I Done? 

This is going to hurt. A lot.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I wrote the following back in Feb 2021, mid-pandemic. It’s without doubt the most personal thing I’ve ever posted on this blog. A few months later, in June 2021, I spent a quarantine summer in the house, alone. That’s when I took the photos. It brought me closer to the place once more - and made those ties even more difficult to sever. 

But the longer I leave it, the more formidable that cloud becomes.

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NEVER TURN BACK

 

‘It’s a forever home,’ said the taxi driver in a twinkling Sarf London accent as he pulled into the drive. I looked at my mother’s house – like one of those social media memes where children’s drawings are brought to life – and nodded. We’d talked all the way from the airport, me about my ageing mother, he about his plans to retire in Spain. He was the sort – a Dave, or Phil, or Kev – that I’d been to school with, and had spent my twenties and thirties trying to escape. And now here we were, he ready finally to flee the Home Counties nest, seeking adventure, and me returning to my roots.

 

My parents always told me that I chose the house. I’ve never been quite sure if that was one of those semi-truths that parents explain to indulge their offspring that eventually take on mythical status in the grown offspring’s mind. I do have a very, very vague recollection of dogs, dogs in the quiet cul-de-sac of shiny new houses. I was obsessed with dogs as a small child. Maybe I chose the dogginess, not the house.

 

The house is (give or take) the same age as me. Twenty-seven detached houses were built in the grounds of a grand house that was repurposed as an Old Folks’ Home, as such places were called in the 1960s. The houses all bore the same style but varied in the brick colour – reddy-pink, yellow, or white stucco, like the layers of an Angel Cake. Some more generously sized, others smaller. All with a miniscule (to 21^st century eyes) single garage, the doors painted in cheerful Matchbox toy colours. Ours was a summer sky blue, next door’s a British Racing Green.

 

We moved in in the spring, as the horse chestnuts on either side of the hill were in bloom. My bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking a garden with lavender, snapdragons, roses and apple-trees. And oak woods at the back. 

 

Together we’ve climbed hills and trees, 

Learned of love and A-B-Cs, 

Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees 

Goodbye, my friend … but no, not yet.

 

I could walk to school from the house, to Scottish dancing, and ice cream with tinned fruit salad if we were lucky, prunes and custard if we weren’t. Netball games and making cross-stitch tray-cloths. Poetry (of a certain kind) also featured on the curriculum and two poems stayed in my mind – in fact, I probably did what I’d now call a mental mash-up of the two. Hardly surprising as they were both on the same theme, and probably written around the same time:

 

I remember, I remember

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

 

… and

 

… It made the Paradise complete:

My early home was this.

 

But a paradise is never stable. As I grew, I accumulated thoughts and ideas that didn’t fit in that “bower of bliss”. It became a prison in my mind. I didn’t want to have friends round as I was ashamed of my father’s posh voice and my mother’s fur coat. The garden became a chore, the bedroom – now decorated in turquoise, olive green and orange – somewhere I hid furtively to write pretentious poetry and cut pictures of dubious rockers out of the NME. We drank tin party barrels from Watneys in the woods, made bombs, and experimented with smoking sunflower leaves.

 

I couldn’t wait to leave.

 

In my twenties, I bought my own flat – decorated with one or two bits and bobs from the old place that I considered ironic in their slight tackiness, but otherwise all furnishings were new. My parents would talk about me coming home for Sunday lunch, but I saw it otherwise. Going to Camberley was a duty, a rather arduous one at the time, which inevitably involved drinking sherry on top of a hangover at some ungodly hour. Home: unwittingly, I drifted into being someone that didn’t really have a home. I lived in hotels, slept on aeroplanes, kipped round at friends’ places at weekends and disappeared off to weekend cottages with gangs of chums, in a Richard Curtis film sort of way. I was one of those devil-may-care Anywhere people. Wannabe global elite. Probably quite obnoxious.

 

In March 1996, I jumped the great ship Britannia as she sailed towards the island of Cool. My one-way ticket cut through the Heathrow fog like a landing light. Terminal 1 echoed with finality – no going back? London still slept but my mind already marched to the beat of the Teutonic clock. My heart followed more than willingly, long lost in the mists of a fairy tale. My mother, in some of her more dramatic moments later, called this an abandonment. I didn’t see it that way. I was European. I could come and go as I pleased. It was only later that I realised that this wasn’t about me. It was about my father, by that time already ill. 

 

The last years of the 20^th century were probably the furthest I’ve been, emotionally, away from my early home. The new Millennium marked my slow return. A birth and a death in unbearably quick succession. Taking my infant son back to my family home for the funeral meant the aviation genes in his blood would be stimulated, and he’d grow up knowing this place too.

 

It was a rediscovery, each time we flew across to the UK. The swing in the garden, painted dark green by my late father, the oak woods waiting for us, along with the toys in the toy box, the Puffin books, the sherry in the cocktail cabinet of the Ladderax, and my mother’s fur coat which Marius could dress up in and pretend he was going to snowy Narnia. I’d toppled off the career ladder (was I pushed, or did I jump?) and didn’t really give a toss. I now had Somewhere – two Somewheres – two Places for Us to accumulate not just stuff but memories, opinions, friends, hobbies and responsibilities, all in a glorious binocular muddle.

 

When one Somewhere became too much, I’d know the other was waiting for me and jump in the car.

 

Before she died, my mother asked what I’d do with the house. I was honest and said I didn’t have a clue – there were more pressing matters on my mind, like how long she had left, and whether she was in pain. 

 

‘Perhaps you’ll live here,’ she said, hopeful as ever.

 

The pandemic has put its killjoy foot firmly down on my double life and my flitting across the channel. The neighbours sent jolly pictures of bunting for the VE Day Anniversary Street Party last year, and recently crocuses from the wooded area up the hill. My brother checks on things, rather half-heartedly. This friend or that one makes helpful suggestions. You could rent it out. It’s a good time to sell. People are moving out of London. You could turn it into a writing retreat (I know, I know – they mean well).

 

In my sleeping and waking thoughts, the house lurches around from being the most cumbersome, resource-leeching and ridiculous of white elephants, to being some sort of paradisical life-force source, to being a magnificent mythological cabinet of curiosities, to being a domestic disaster waiting to happen.

 

In German, there’s a verb abnabeln – translated as “to cut oneself loose”, literally, to cut the umbilical cord. I know this is what I will have to do one day. But currently I cannot begin to countenance it. The pandemic is a frustration, but also an excuse. We all like to wallow in the comfort of helplessness. 

 

When I do summon up the wherewithal to say goodbye to the old place – at least in its bricks and mortar form, I hope I can heed the words of aviatrix and adventurer Beryl Markham: 

 

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

 

It’s going to take every ounce of courage I have not to turn back and take one last look at my early home. 

 

Wish me luck!

 

P.S: July 2025

… The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I have learned it late.

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RETROWURST: documenta July 2007

 

This month’s Retrowurst is a step away from the vulgar world of commercial creativity into the world of art for art’s sake. 

Or is it?

See what I had to say about the frankly weird experience that is documenta, back in July 2007.

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This month, Extrawurst is going to be a little different. I am not going to write about brands or marketing as such, but about an event. But, perhaps, as brands are meant to be moving towards becoming total experiences, this will not be totally irrelevant.

 

The event in question is “Documenta”. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Documenta is an exhibition of contemporary art, held every five years in the town of Kassel. Artists from all over the world are featured and I suppose it is Germany’s version of the Venice Biennale.

 

Documenta was founded by the artist Arnold Bode, and the first exhibition was held in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultural show) that was taking place in Kassel at that time. We are now onto Documenta 12 this year and the exhibition runs for 100 days through the summer months.

 

Before I get on to my experience of Documenta itself, it’s worth taking a look at the home of Documenta, Kassel. To be quite honest, Kassel seems an almost bizarre venue for such an international art event. For those of you who have been to Venice during the Biennale, I am sure you’ll agree that the whole thing “fits” somehow, with modern art works taking temporary residence in some of Venice’s most famous ancient buildings as well as the specially constructed country pavilions, themselves of architectural interest.

 

Kassel, however, is a lump of a town with a decidedly split personality. Although it is in the middle of Germany, topographically, it is a town that really feels as if it is in the middle of nowhere. There are no major airports nearby and one travels on the train towards Kassel through what seems like unending (if pleasant enough) countryside of rolling hills and fields. Kassel itself is dominated by fading Teutonic melodrama. A huge statue of Hercules stands atop the hill that overlooks the town. Beneath Hercules are the Schloß and its park – all grottoes, follies and classical temples. But Kassel also has a huge industrial area and one of the highest crime rates in Germany.

 

During Documenta, the town takes on a different face. Not only through the throngs of visitors from all over the globe but also from the works of art that incorporate themselves within the town. This can be in a way obvious to all, like the huge poppy field accompanied by “revolutionary songs” by a Croatian artist that has turned the conservative Friedrichsplatz into a “red square” for the summer, or the 1,000 Chinese nationals who have been invited by a Chinese artist to Kassel to “be” in the German city for a few weeks. Or it can be in a more subtle way, noticed only by visitors, as provocative modern works hang side-by-side with “Flemish painting of the nobility” in the Kassel gallery.

 

For Documenta this year, the main Leitmotifs have been based on three questions: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? and What is to be done? Whether it is a result of these questions or not, many of the works of art on show are very heavy, dealing with war, dispossession, rape and torture, refugees and the aftermath of colonialism: all in all, Documenta 12 doesn’t exactly make for a fun day out for all the family! In addition, most of the visitors seem to be of the particularly earnest sort, scribbling in notebooks and fiddling with their glasses.

 

The result of all of this über-earnestness is that the German media and general public love to poke a bit of fun at Documenta, even if one senses a little bit of hidden pride behind it all in the “we’ve got our eccentric and creative types, too” sense. One artist ran into trouble with the Kassel Straßenverkehrsamt or municipal road authorities when she changed the white lines on some of the roads in Kassel to crosses. This conflict between German rationality and artistic creativity made for a few good news stories. Or there was a touch of Schadenfreude when the severe storms resulted in the collapse of a sculpture outside and part of the main pavilion being under water. In the first case, the artist declared his sculpture to be more beautiful in its collapsed state than in the original, so all was well in the end.

 

I wondered if these paradoxes are what give Documenta its charm. As an event it is unexpected and almost eccentric. It would simply not work as a concept on paper because the bits don’t really fit together. Another part of its charm is that it is almost utterly devoid of any signs of commerciality. The only sponsorship that I saw was from Sparkasse (the Savings Bank) who had sponsored the audio guide. And although a design agency had been commissioned to create signage, a “look” for the attendants and an orientation system, this was unobtrusive to the point that it was fairly easy to become disorientated and lost. But this was, in reality, not a bad thing, as the disorientation led one to works that one normally might have missed.

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I became quite a documenta fan following that visit. I attended documenta 13 in 2012 and 14 in 2017. If my memory serves me correctly, Ben and Jerry’s did some brilliant branding at 2012 which kept a certain young lad from being completely bored out of his skull. And 2017 took place partly in Athens (although I only made it to Kassel) and I recall a brilliant work which was a Parthenon-style installation of banned books.

But I didn’t go in 2022 (15). I wasn’t the only one. Like so many things these days, it all got nasty and ugly and political. Not what I needed just as we were emreging from the Covid Hell. 

And 2027, documenta 16? Who knows. One thing is certain, though. I don’t think any multi-millionaires will be tempted to hold their nuptials in Kassel.

BREXILE: A tale of two ferries

 

I stuck my head in the sand as far as my looming Brexile project goes over Christmas and New Year. Well, that’s not quite true. There wasn’t much sand about, and instead of an exotic holiday on a warm sandy beach, I decided to see in a New Year in my Old Home and party like it’s 1999. Turned out it was more like 1979, even better, but that’s another story.

Choosing ferries was important as it would set the tone for what’s going to be a frequent commute this year. I note that, mid-Covid, I was bright and breezy and optimistic about the future of travel. 

If only.

That was before P&O fell in a lamentable mess out of my consideration set (I do actually have one of these fabled constructs for ferries) as a result of their shocking treatment of staff. But maybe because it was near Christmas and I was feeling peace-and-goodwill-to-all-ferry-operators, I decided to give them another chance.

The pre-sailing email didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it was too late to change things by that point.

I can’t abide the expression “grab” - which P&O (or their AI copywriter) see fit to use every other sentence. I would have hoped that Mr Trump’s use of the word in connection with female anatomy might have put writers off using it. Regrettably not.

It was even worse than feared - I don’t like getting all hoity-toity-Karen and threatening with eternal damnation on Trip Advisor, but sometimes you just have to vent forth. I regurgitated much of the review above when P&O sent me one of their badly-constructed surveys.

Just when I thought it was all over, I got this email. If you can make any sense of it, well done you:

A glutton for punishment, I clicked in an idle fashion into their website and wasn’t too surprised to find one of Germany’s most famous landmarks has moved a few hundred km north west to Frankfurt. Ho hum.

What do I take out of all this about the brand P&O?

Easy. They don’t give a seagull’s shit about customers, service or accuracy.

The tale does have a happy end as I’d booked the return ferry with DFDS.

Now, that’s what I call a ferry service!

RETROWURST: Money February 2006

 

Today I discovered a lost world. That of German banks eighteen years ago. Things have changed and not necessarily for the better. Take a time-trip back to my Extrawurst from February 2006 and discover why Kredit was one of the dirtiest words in the German language. The Germans have plenty of new dirty words these days, mostly stolen from us or our US friends, which is not encouraging. Back then, I wrote about the big banks with their impressive Frankfurt skyscrapers, and their intimidating but competent advisors. The reassuring air of stuffiness and formality, coupled with the persistence of the personal touch, the reluctance to go online and digital with it all.

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The time has come, today, to tackle one of the dirtiest words in the German language. It’s not the word Scheiße or Schweinhund but a rather inoffensive looking and sounding little six letter word: Kredit. Along with looking at the reasons why this is a word so loaded with negative meaning, I’ll have a go at trying to get behind some general German views on all things money and finance.

 

I used to live in Frankfurt where one of the defining features or iconic elements is the skyline, which is dominated by Frankfurt (and Germany’s) leading banks, all vying with each other to see who can build the tallest skyscraper. Since the late 1990s, the Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and rivals have also been joined by the European Central Bank, the spawning ground (if you like) of the Euro. It is actually quite difficult to get away from money in Frankfurt: on every corner is a bank or at least a Geldautomat and even if you do escape to one of the Olde Worlde Apfelwein pubs in Alt Sachsenhausen, one quick glance skywards will bring you back to the world of money, even if your neighbours at the table aren’t bankers (which would be unusual.).

 

The German banks, particularly the “big boys” such as the Deutsche Bank (www.deutsche-bank.de ), Dresdner Bank (www.dresdner-bank.de ) and Commerzbank (www.commerzbank.de) tend to be, on the surface, somewhat intimidating and less immediately approachable than their UK equivalents. One still gets the feeling, which is reflected in their web presence to some extent, that there will be no chummy banter here and one should really put on a suit when going to the bank, even if it’s just to make a simple money transfer. Although the big banks have moved with the times to some extent, there still seems to be some feeling of stuffiness and formality. However, one can sense a pattern here that is very similar to that of relationships in general in Germany: these tend to develop slowly, step-by-step, until the no-turning-back-friend-for-life stage of “du-sing” is attained. 

 

Although one doesn’t get all the chummy, jokey, for-God’s sake we’re-not-boring-and-we’re gonna-prove-it attitude of UK banks in Germany, we also don’t get the call centres and never speaking to the same person twice that we are beset with in the UK (I know, I still have a UK bank account.) In Germany, everyone has an advisor assigned to them at their own branch, with a direct phone line, regardless of whether you have a couple of thousand Euros or a few billion. These advisors really do get to know you and your preferences when it comes to accessibility of your money, what kind of investments suit you and what your future plans are, which is particularly important in a country where everyone is rapidly having to seek alternatives to the state for health insurance, pensions and the rest.

 

While the big three banks dominate the skyline of Frankfurt, most Germans actually have their account at the local Sparkasse or savings bank (www.sparkasse.de ), Volksbank or Co-op bank (www.volksbank.de ) or the Postbank (www.postbank.de ). While these banks may be a little less intimidating than the big three, they are never-the-less places of seriousness and formality. In fact, when Germans are asked about which qualities or values are important in choosing a bank, trustworthiness, serious and solid reputation and flexible to my personal needs are the top three criteria, with modernity and friendliness seen as “nice to have” but not critical. 

 

Although the banks do seem to have moved with the times, the use of services such as on-line banking is still relatively low in Germany and the idea of physically visiting the bank to make transactions still a very popular one. Even cash dispensers seemed to take longer to catch on here and one feels that there is a huge underlying mistrust of finance and banking conducted by anything other than real people.

 

This brings me on, of course, to that dirty word: Kredit. While things have improved over the last ten years, when I first came to Germany, I was astounded by the unacceptability of plastic generally. To buy a major item, one either had to pay in cash or write out a number of cheques, each of which had a maximum value of DM 400 in those days. Credit cards were scorned and frowned upon almost as much as if one came up with a begging bowl. Again, the distrust seems to stem from a very direct relationship that Germans seem to have about money: carrying large wads of cash around or openly discussing with strangers the cost of your house or car are not seen in any way as vulgar displays but rather as an honest, straightforward approach.

 

Credit cards are still barely accepted today. Visitors to Germany are often surprised and embarrassed that restaurants turn their noses up even at Mastercard and VISA. And the Mastercard and VISA cards here tend to be cards that are paid off within 4-8 weeks, so not real credit cards at all! Mastercard did themselves no favours with the German public by making the World Cup tickets draw only accessible to Mastercard holders. However, a step in the right direction, to win the Germans’ trust in plastic money has been made in the last few years with the introduction of the “ec card”, a form of direct debit card that doubles as a cash card that is issued by most banks. But to think that this has only been in general use for the last 5 years or so is astounding.

 

Part of the disgust for credit cards may well come from the fact that they are seen as coming from profligate and decadent lands, such as the US and UK. Perhaps if one of the big German banks could introduce a very serious, trustworthy and solid credit card (maybe made a bit thicker than “your flexible friend”) that signaled control and financial acumen instead of profligacy when you took it out of your wallet, they could be onto a real money-spinner.

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Things probably started to go sour in that fateful year 2008. The Dresdner Bank was acquired by the Commerzbank in May 2009. 

What do we have now? Blowing up cash machines seems to be a national hobby. Bank branches are disappearing faster than tigers. I’m reduced to asking for cashback at the supermarket more often than not. While Covid speeded up the move to a cashless society, there are plenty of flies in the ointment - local independent shops and restaurants who don’t take cards - and who can blame them?

I’m still hanging on in there with the Commerzbank in the hope that things will get better, but I’ve been let down by them far too often, with the resulting loss of trust. Frying pan and fire come to mind.

Still, things aren’t quite as dire as they are in the UK. But that’s another story. 

Miss you

Is British advertising getting its mojo back?

I've noticed a couple of ads - very different but on the same theme (or insight, if you will) that have made me wonder if British humour and general silliness is making a comeback after all those dreary plinky-piano angsty offerings.

I mentioned Yorkshire Tea's Skipton Alfie in my last post.  And now, along comes this one from Heinz - "Too Good to Leave Behind."

Now, of course, I don't see "someone who looks like me" in this ad. But, boy do I identify with it!

I've suffered delayed luggage recently and can seriously understand this chap's pain on missing his beans. My trips to the UK usually involve stocking up on various comestibles. This article - not sure how old it is, but its probably from the last couple of years, lists the Top 10 most popular British products globally, via The British Corner Shop. And the Top 3 are Warburton's Crumpets, Heinz Baked Beans and Cadbury's Flake. So Heinz and their agency, Wieden & Kennedy London, have even done the data-fuelled, fact-based thing, yah, boo, sucks!

None of my absolute favourites made the Top 10, funnily enough. No Marmite, Colman's, or Gordon's Sloe Gin. But maybe these are acquired tastes, given that this is global sales.

I do hope that the ad world will see a return of self-deprecating, batty British humour post-Brexitpermacrisisetcetc. After all, it is Too Good To Leave Behind. 

RETROWURST: Public Holidays May 2005

 

Here we go on another trip back in time, to my reflections on the merry month of May in Germany, with its glut of public holidays. Off I went, following the tipsy processions through the fields and woods, slurping down Maibowle on the way.

I must have got bored of that topic as the article then lurched into the subject of greeting cards in Germany. If my memory serves me correctly, I had a project on the go on this theme.

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It’s May and that annoying time of year again, if you work in the UK, when every time you call your colleagues in Germany or other continental countries, they seem to be having yet another public holiday or, worse still, they had a public holiday yesterday, which was Thursday, and are having the Friday off for good measure.

 

Public holidays come thick and fast after Easter here in Germany; there’s the first of May, of course (although we don’t move this around if it inconveniently falls on a weekend as it did this year; it would be most un-German to call the third the first, or whatever) and then we’ve just had Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in quick succession. Mother’s Day is understandable enough; this is the same as in the UK (on a Sunday) except that it’s in May instead of March, possibly to provide a better fresh seasonal flower selection. Father’s Day is a little more difficult to understand- it is actually Himmelfahrt or Ascension Day in the Christian Calendar but has been hi-jacked somewhere along the way to celebrate all that is manly and fatherly. Typically, it is a good excuse for men to go out for a long walk through the woods and fields, pulling a little cart heavily stocked with beer and Schnapps. These expeditions start fairly early in the morning and the progressively drunken procession lurches from one beer garden to the next, occasionally topping up in-between from the little cart. Sons are often included from a relatively early age, usually as an insurance measure to pull the cart or find the way home once the fathers become incapable. All this is rather different from the genteel coffee, cake and flower arrangements that constitute the typical Mother’s Day. So much so, that, recently, in the spirit of equality, groups of women can now also be observed on Father’s Day, crashing through the foliage to enjoy the odd glass of Prosecco.

 

No sooner are Father’s and Mother’s Days over than is Pfingsten or Whitsun and another long weekend (elongated even further in Frankfurt with the celebration of Waldchestag, or Woods Day on the Tuesday- yes, you guessed it- more drunken lurching and frolicking in the woods!) upon us. Sometime in late May or early June is Fronleichnam (or Happy Cadaver as I once heard it charmingly referred to; actually Corpus Christi) then that’s the lot in most of Germany except a few extreme Catholic strongholds until the frightening-sounding Tag der Deutschen Einheit in October.

 

You would think, what with Christmas and Easter and birthdays to add to all this, that the greetings card industry in Germany would be huge, but there you’d be wrong. Whereas, in the UK, Hallmark and their ilk have capitalised on the North American willingness to celebrate or commiserate every possible event or non-event of human life’s rich tapestry in card format, the greetings card market in Germany is under-developed which may be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. 

 

Starting with Christmas, the card selection is rather sparse. Maybe the Germans think that they are being damaging enough to the environment by insisting on real Christmas trees for all without then wasting the paper that’s involved in Christmas cards to every distant relative and acquaintance, including the dustmen. There are certainly no “bumper boxes” of 50 cards with the only nod to bulk-buying being packets of six postcards of snow scenes or candles. What cards there are have a very traditional flavour- you won’t find anything with “cool yule”, smutty poems about drunken reindeer or retro photos with 21^st century captions here. And these cards are mostly sold singly.

 

When it comes to birthdays, there is a market but it’s somewhat limited. Your choice tends to be amongst “funny cards”, which resemble those “funny cards” you used to get in the UK in the 1970s- tall and thin with very thin sub-Carry-On humour, cards that even most grannies would find too twee or the pre-teen girl selection featuring either Diddl (a mouse with oversized feet who I think hails from Austria) or those grey patchwork teddies who look like baby seals waiting to be clubbed. For younger children, there is little sign of the whole character merchandising industry anyway and especially not on birthday cards. Whereas you’re confronted by Bob, Postman Pat, the Tweenies, the old Disney favourites and the latest Disney/animation heroes from the first birthday onwards in the UK, you would be very lucky to find a birthday card that even has an age on it in Germany (unless it’s an age over 60 - as I’ve said before, Germany is a very old-friendly country where seniority is a badge to be proud of!). 

 

For other occasions (with the notable exception of condolence cards), the choice is very narrow indeed: even those “no text all purpose” cards are rather hard to come-by. In addition, what there is tends to be very bland and generally inoffensive, verging on twee. Cards for new babies, for example, are almost never funny but show, instead, rose- or baby blue- tinted symbols and images of unrealistic infant perfection. No jokes about stinks or embarrassing noises here!

 

Perhaps the reason for this under-development stems back to the German dislike of superficiality. Many of the card-giving occasions themselves (those that are not traditional German celebrations) are regarded as another ugly and blatant attempt for the US capitalist machine to squeeze more money out of us. Halloween and Valentine’s Day are two examples of occasions that have been “pushed” in recent years and are treated with increasing cynicism. Furthermore, the thought process in Germany tends to go- if you really care about the person who is celebrating, then put some time, money and effort into doing something personal and relevant to them- giving flowers, picking up the phone, making a card yourself and so on, otherwise, don’t bother. Card-giving tends to send out signals here of a “halfway house”; you’re doing the simplest, cheapest thing out of duty more than anything else.

 

In a way, they do have a point. Anyone who has suffered a deluge of those corporate Christmas cards signed in a rush by people who neither know nor care about you or has wondered how many two-year-olds really appreciate the full cast of the Teletubbies, Tweenies and Balamory in cardboard form may well wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off forgetting the card and enjoying the celebration instead, even if it does involve trees, rain and some very dubious Schnapps.

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Greetings cards are still pretty low-key in Germany, although there are loads around at the moment for Konfirmation. I wonder if the generation being confirmed at the moment (born around 2010) are a little bemused by these analogue relics. A popular alternative to cards for birthdays and the like seem to be those rather gaudy helium balloons. 

Fests are, thankfully, back on the calendar following Covid. Out here in the country, it’s not just Public Holidays, but almost any form of local produce, flora or fauna, from asparagus to apple blossom to potatoes that gets its own Fest.

I think I’ll give the Grillfest at the rabbit breeders’club a miss, though.

WFO(AH)

 

Do you know that feeling? You discover a perfect little restaurant tucked away somewhere, then before you know it, it’s featured in some fashionable magazine or the latest influencer swans into it. Your little secret is secret no more.

I feel the same about my working arrangements as a freelancer, especially now that the sharks are out for that recent acronym, WFH. The good, not so good, great and think-they’re-great of the Davos set are proclaiming that “remote working has not worked.” That was Larry Fink of Black Rock, apparently.

Meanwhile, at the other end (?) of the political spectrum, certain journalists are having a bash at “the pyjama classes” and “the laptop elites.” I have some sympathy with this view, having seen efforts from ad agencies in 2020 featuring every WFH cliche going: the pyjamas and jogging pants, the dog/cat/kids invading the Zoom conference with its silly, jokey background. Meanwhile, there weren’t any people featured in these Covid vignettes who were out there doing a job, keeping the world running. And yes, it make me wonder about the value of what I do here ...

But there’s a difference. I have been self-employed for twenty years now and I started without a laptop, just a cheap Aldi computer,  a Freenet email address and a trusty Nokia mobile phone. Within 18 months, I was lucky indeed: we bought a house and the top floor became my office. From the start, I was disciplined, although it was against my nature - but I had to be, starting out in business with a toddler in tow.

Having an office space (which happens to be in my home) does make the difference. There is a door, which I can shut. A whole weekend can go by without me going upstairs to the top floor. Sometimes I am up there evenings, or for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, working, but that’s usually my choice. The clue is in the term “self-employed."

This isn’t meant to be a whinge about being lumped in with everyone else who was forced into WFH in 2020, although it does sometimes feel to me like my experience with gin & tonic - something I’ve always enjoyed, which became terribly fashionable but is now on the wane again. All  I want is to make a simple distinction: I’m working from an office - which happens to be at home.

WFO(AH). 

RETROWURST: Chemicals in Home & Garden September 2004

 

In September 2004, I wrote on the rather unpromising-sounding topic of chemicals in home and garden. Nevertheless, the article references schoolboy bombs, drinking your own urine and packs of fags for under £2. So here goes:

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In September, everyone in Germany is back from their holidays, feeling a little glum as the first leaves start falling in the beer gardens and the mini-golf courses close up for the Autumn. People retreat back into their homes, start packing away the summer clothes, inflatable boats, garden furniture and barbeques. It’s the time of year to make a bit of an effort in the garden and a recent visit to the garden centre has inspired the theme of this month’s Extrawurst - the German war against chemicals.

 

It may seem a paradox that the country that spawned so many chemical and drug giants - Hoechst and Bayer to name but two - should be waging war on chemicals, but please hear me out. To illustrate my point, let’s pop back to the garden centre. I was after something to kill off a few weeds- in the lawn and growing up between the patio stones. I didn’t anticipate any difficulty and had the German word for weeds - Unkraut, literally ‘un-herbs’ – in my head. In the UK, of course, it’s completely in order to pick up products off the shelf to rid your lawn and garden of dandelions, thistles, slugs and even unwanted cats. Only the neat Sodium Nitrate (or whatever it is) that my brother used to combine sugar with to make schoolboy bombs back in the 1970s is probably under slightly stricter control these days. In Germany, however, I searched high and low and couldn’t find any easily accessible products on the shelves of the garden centre. I eventually saw a locked cabinet behind an information desk and enquired hesitatingly if they had anything to rid my lawn of a few dandelions. I was subjected to a complete interrogation as to the dimensions of my lawn (who, other than the average German, knows exactly how many m² their lawn is??!!) and given a lecture as to how the products were not to be let near any footpath, pavement, road or any other public place (accompanied by pointing at large handwritten signs to this effect) before the cabinet was unlocked and my weed killer handed over.

 

Maybe some of this attitude can be put down to the inherent closeness and responsibility that Germans feel for the Umwelt, or environment. There are many words that exist in German which relate to the environment which don’t have a direct English translation- such as Mülltrennung, or ‘rubbish-sorting’. But the war against chemicals is also fought on fronts with a less direct connection with the environment. Some of you may remember my piece about the Kräuterhexwhich looked into the reluctance that Germans have about treating ailments with something that might actually work. While it’s quite easy to sneak into Superdrug in a UK high street and buy copious quantities of Anadin and Alka-Seltzer (or your preferred poison) to deal with the hangover from Hell, in Germany it is rather different. None of these remedies are available in the Supermarket or even the Drogerie. You are expected to go to the pharmacist where you will be questioned carefully as to the nature of your headache and will be asked which dosage level, pack size and even possibly dosage form (don’t think about this too closely - let’s just say suppository or Zäfpchen and be done with it. Yes. For a headache.) The moral of all this is, go easy at the Oktoberfest.

 

Within the household cleaners category, the same rules seem to apply. Finding an oven cleaner that is at all effective is hard work, almost as hard as cleaning the oven itself. Ditto stuff to unblock drains - everything proudly promotes its Bio mode of action, which seems to actually mean elbow grease and sheer man (or woman) power. Needless to say, the lurid Oxy-this and Vanish-that types of products with their day-glo packaging haven’t really caught on here. At my last ‘real’ job I remember hours spent trying to convince brand managers at a well-known US detergent company that ‘anti-bac’ variants of washing powder were the ultimate turn-off to German Mums - this is the country, after all, where quite normal women’s magazines run articles about the health benefits of drinking your own urine (although marginally preferable to drinking someone else’s, I suppose.)

 

The reluctance to spray chemicals everywhere also has its consequences when buying fresh produce. It is not unusual to buy a lettuce and find it crawling with caterpillars or buzzing with bugs, and this is not just from the Bio, or organic section - I imagine one would find a whole menagerie lurking in the Lollo Rosso there! Rather than throwing up their arms in horror and demanding a refund, most Germans would find this reassuring that their salad leaves had been properly raised in a natural ecosystem.

 

Of course, it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security and suppose that, as long as we stay away from chemicals and unnatural substances, then we are giving the Germans what they desire. But there are always exceptions to the rule. While paranoid about polluting the environment, many Germans have no such qualms about their own bodies when it comes to smoking. Smoking still bears almost no social stigma here, cigarette vending machines are on every street corner at a height that a four-year-old can reach and even Aldi Süd have capitulated and are now selling cigarettes. At €2.90 for a packet of 19 ‘Giants’ (that is just under £2), there is not much financial motivation for anyone to give up!

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Covid has made a little dent into the “germ/ans are good” perception, but other than that, the view on chemicals is just as strong as before.

Plus ca change? Well, not exactly. Remember those £2 ciggies? In your (pipe) dreams. At last, it appears, the tide is turning and we may well be at the fag-end of the great German smoke-fest (to mix more metaphors than is good for me). 

Bloomin’ Lemons

 

In my last post, I referred to a talk by Orlando Wood, which sent me down an Orlando-shaped rabbit hole in search of more of his wise and wonderful thinking. He has published two books, Lemon and Look Out, which sound well worth reading. And as a preview, there’s a 20 minute film, produced in June 2020, those heady days when we thought the pestilence was as good as all over ...

I don’t think a marketing-related film has ever made me feel homesick before, but I’m afraid this one did, with halcyon scenes of the Thames in all its midsummer glory. Where the Lemons Bloom starts with an anecdote about Goethe, and how working as an administrator for the Court of Weimar stifled his creativity, so much so that he took off and fled to Italy in the middle of the night.

This reflects Orlando’s premise: that advertising has become less effective over the last fifteen years or so, due to a shift to the left-brain mode. Flatter, more abstraction, less holistic, less employment of metaphor and humour. No doubt a consequence of the obsession with being “data-driven”.

And it’s not just marketing communications. Culturally, the effect is only too apparent - intense focus on particular words, often taken out of context. Obsessions with categorisation and labelling people. A widespread sense of humour failure and lack of appreciation of nuance. 

Is human intelligence becoming more artificial, I wonder?

Testing dot com

 

There’s a new pandemic in the UK - this time, of medical test providers, with more and more springing up daily like new Covid variants.

Whereas it seems to be possible in Germany to travel a short distance to the nearest town and get your PCR test to travel, in the UK the situation is rather different.

It’s a requirement of entry from Germany at the moment to pre-order tests to be done on Day 2 and Day 8 of your ten day quarantine period. And booking and waiting for these tests is an experience that would certainly dim the Wanderlust of anyone remotely faint-hearted (or anyone whose native language isn’t English).

The UK government website currently shows 433 test providers.  Would-be travellers are advised that the government doesn’t give any advice about these - the traveller is advised to “do their own research”. 

Now, can you imagine researching 433 different options? Going through this medical multiplicity is rather like being on booking dot com or similar: “only 6 tests left at this price” “1m people are looking at tests for this date” “3,000 tests booked in the last hour” - I am not exaggerating greatly.

Most of the providers have smart, well-designed websites that promise efficiency, reassurance, simplicity, speed (if you can afford it) and so on and so forth, all at a reasonable price. Many have names designed to get them to the front of the list. Some boast their capacity, others their Mission and caring/human credentials.

But in the end, it’s not like choosing a hotel that you may want to come back to. It’s what is called a “distress purchase” that most people resent paying for, and you just want it done and delivered in time.

I’ve had a mixed experience with Day 2 (delivered in good time) and Day 8 (somewhat tardy and had me perspiring a little, especially reading some bad reviews about lost tests and missing flights). 

I’m about to do my test to travel, which is even more critical.

I can only hope and pray.

Unlocking - it’s Opening Time!

 Around a year ago, advert-wise, we were at peak “we’re here for you” mode with all those interchangeable COVID commercials. One year on, and there’s a quite different mood on our screens, if not in real life yet, at least in my part of Germany.

KFC are back to licking fingers, while Wrigley’s Extra Gum has got birds, bees, dings and mojos buzzing all over the place.

Then there’s Lynx who have gone back to their roots and reinterpreted “The Lynx Effect” for the post Covid world, in a sensory celebration:

And my favourite, from Guinness - beautifully on-brand, with a strong insight that when you’re longing for something (or someone) you see it (them) everywhere you look:

I am sure there are plenty more, too, even if I must admit that I am still in the “confused” mindset, brilliantly portrayed by Burger King. Especially when it comes to the absurd and contradictory travel rules and regulations I’m going to have to navigate on my forthcoming trip to Blighty.

Which brands do you want to cosy up to?

 

Back at the turn of the Millennium, it was called “cocooning”, a retreat from the 24/7 always-on world. It took on a Sacndinavian flavour in the last decade or so, in the form of hygge or mysig, with Instagram as a perfect medium to sing its praises. And it has been the over-riding trend and desire throughout the pandemic - and quite possibly something some people will be reluctant to move away from as the outside world re-opens. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if workplaces become more homely once the workers return. Like kindergartens that allow children to bring one special soft toy or security blanket. When it eventually comes to Covid nostalgia - which it surely will - this word, this concept, will be top of many people’s lists.

I’m talking about cosiness. You can see its takeover of our world across fashion, across home furnishings and across books, to name just a few. The “cosy mystery” genre of the fiction section - those stories involving amateur sleuths in a picturesque community, with very little blood and gore to be seen - is selling like hot-cakes. Along with cuddly blankets decorated with pizza patterns.

Cats, crosswords, cakes, Christmas, crochet, cottages and countryside - all cosiness.

Cosiness is different to comfort. It is, if you like, a combination of comfort and joy as the song goes. While comfort is often sought to right a wrong, or can simply be the absence of unpleasant feelings, cosiness is a positive choice.

Cosiness is about free will, not a reaction to being victimised in some way.

Cosiness is very much about the senses, especially the sense of touch.

Despite the ubiquity of cosiness around us, there are very few brands that expound cosiness as a value. Maybe it’s because of the ubiquity, maybe because marketing people feel cosiness is too fluffy, not dynamic enough, not lofty enough.

But I think it would be a welcome alternative to all those rather high-powered brand purposes, tiring-sounding manifestoes, and being preached to.    

Dream-Pedlary

 

During the first wave of the pandemic, advertisers from retailers to telecoms, food to insurance, appeared to all have received the same script for their TV commercials, which was executed in a remarkably similar fashion worldwide: plinky piano music, an "empathetic" yet rather sombre tone, vignettes of human despair and hope, and a promise of "being there for you.”

Meanwhile, on social media, people created and shared their own entertainment: OK, there were plenty of mawkish poems, but much inventive and fun stuff too - horse-riding and mountain-climbing illusions created within the confines of a small apartment, toilet-paper jokes a-plenty and song parodies that most of us still have stuck in their heads. Which seems unlikely for any of those "we're here for you" ads, let alone whichever brands they were attached to.

Those few weeks really brought into focus the challenge facing the advertising industry today, which Paul Feldwick examines in his latest book, "Why does the pedlar sing?". Advertising is less liked and less effective than it was a decade or two ago. 

While many of those in the industry may put the blame at the door of the client, for not being brave enough to buy their edgy, disruptive ideas, Paul Feldwick asks the question: what is good advertising, actually? Is it the bold, kick-ass, "stuff that matters" that's celebrated on LinkedIn and at awards ceremonies?

The answer to this question is drawn from Paul Feldwick's previous book, "The Anatomy of Humbug" as well as a fascinating look back to the origins of modern advertising, 20th century examples from his own experience, and recent studies/works from Binet & Field, Orlando Wood and Byron Sharp: good advertising is popular, something people like and something that makes brands famous.

The book is full of good advice on how to develop - and even create - better advertising. I work as a strategic planner, and I found the idea of getting away from the "essentialist" theory of brands a good wake-up call: instead of theorising about brand essences in a Platonic sort of way, get down to a direct appeal to the senses through a brand's "distinctive assets". And let the "creative process" - if it can be described as such - take its chaotic, iterative, not logically-predictable course.

The book raised questions with me, which is a good sign. Is fame (in a mass-media, mainstream sense) different for niche or local brands? And how does the call for more representation/reflection of people's lives in advertising tally with a return to the fun of the fair, the cartoon animals, the wild and wonderful, satire and general nonsense? Not to mention the much stricter regulations and guidelines imposed on the industry?

Like "The Anatomy of Humbug" before it, "Why does the pedlar sing" is engagingly-written, with a good dose of personal experience and opinion thrown in. I'd recommend it to anyone who works in brand communications and advertising.

And once lockdown is over and I can get back to the UK, I'm heading to the Museum of Brands.

World sanitiser

 

                                                            The author in Paros, October 2005

Nine months ago, I was maybe foolishly optimistic about the return of travel and the re-emergence of a revived travel industry. With all the talk of building back better and big resets, the industry that is still suffering from the pandemic fallout is travel. The hoped-for recovery just isn't happening, whether it's airlines, hotels or tour operators. Not surprising, as we have just had lockdown extended for the umpteenth time.

There's an article here from Springwise that tries to take a positive tone, about clever innovations within the travel industry to adapt to people's changed behaviour and need expectations as a result of the pandemic.

But can I be the only one that finds this dreary, and rather missing the point?

Whether it's art exhibitions or travelling exotic lands, there is a limit to how much virtuality you can take. Like those virtual shoes and outfits that some people apparently pay astonishing sums of real money for, the novelty wears off at some point. 

Virtual reality Japanese Onsen bathhouse experience? I'd prefer to wait for the real thing. One day.

Guest rooms in bubbles? Haven't we had enough of bubbles, from the filter sort to the friends and family sort?

Robots doing all the stuff that, in years gone by, came with a twinkling smile, a drink on the house that stretched into six, and stories about the days and nights they shot that famous Hollywood film in the bay round the coast ...

Contactless hotels, facial recognition technology ... yes, good. But the photos are cold and perfect and devoid of any human touch. Contactless, indeed.

All this stuff may be about "needs" and "changed behaviours", but what about desire?

I've got a yearning for dirt. Greasy spoon cafes and restaurants without a menu at all (and I don't mean it's all online). Heat and dust, colourful chaos, mess, adventure, surprises - the bad ones, too, that you can laugh about afterwards. Places so windy wearing a mask is laughable. Laughing about everything and anything.

A pre-pandemic, pre-Instagram, unsanitised world.