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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Tell it like it is

 

Having (potentially) two Mothers’ Days (the UK Mothering Sunday in March and yesterday’s international Mother's Day) is a bit like having two passports.

When all’s going well, you get the best of both. But, more often than not, you end up sitting on the fence and not really getting much of either. 

Mothers’ Day in Germany was a bit of a mixed (old) bag for me this year.

My one offspring was not around, having absconded to Helsinki on a spontaneous jaunt with a chum. But he did deliver a couple of very fine bottles of wine before he flew off.

I didn’t receive any flowers, but I did get a delightfully kitsch heart-shaped strawberry cake, which was delicious and quickly gobbled up.

No lie-in for me*, as we had an early morning band rehearsal for our Spring concert. Two of the band’s young mums turned up, one wearing a “Beste Mama der Welte” T-shirt and the other with two small boys in tow. She spent much of the practice dealing with snacks, drinks, a few squeals and shrieks that weren’t on the manuscript, as well as at least one nappy change. 

Mothers’ Day isn’t really like this - probably not even for Meghan:

  

Amid all the kitsch and chocolates, flowers and fake smiles, it was refreshing to see this ad for the Aldi Süd brand (creative from Antoni99). 

Now, Mothers' Day and Fathers’ Day (which is Ascension Day) are always pretty close to each other in Germany. This means a film about parents and children makes a lot of sense. 

This film speaks for itself - it’s a kitsch-free yet moving look at the relationship between parents and children over a lifetime. It’s based on a powerful insight - or what we used to called a Simple Universally Recognised Truth (SURT) - “because all parents are also children.” It ends with some genuine photos of generations that Aldi customers have sent in, showing the love between parents and children of whatever age.

Now that’s what I call authentic.

*By the way, I didn’t draw the shortest of short straws - it was my husband who valiantly got up at some unmentionable hour to drive the offspring to the airport for his Finnish jaunt.

From one Heile Welt to the next

 

When I first came to Germany and listened to people in group discussions talking about advertising (mostly TV advertising in those days), one phrase I heard again and again was Heile Welt. It’s a phrase that doesn’t translate exactly into English, but the idea is of an undamaged/unhurt/unbroken world. It’s a bit like a Utopia, but presented as if it just could be reality.

Advertising in those days in Germany was more influenced by US-style advertising typified by P&G than the more self-deprecating humour, or surreal flights of fantasy found in UK advertising at the time.

The Heile Welt had some typical tropes - flawless skin, happy nuclear families, white washing and sparkling homes, svelte and beautiful career women tossing manes of glossy hair around, endless summers in a countryside idyll, wise and knowing loving grannies in cosy rustic kitchens, square-jawed men driving impossibly shiny cars up picturesque mountain passes ... R.E.M’s Shiny Happy People wherever you looked.

I think, in those days, most people watching knew the rules of the game. It was only advertising, after all.

In the last few years, there has been a greater call for authenticity in brand communication. More reflection of “real people” (what other kind are there?) and “real life” as well as more representation of today’s diverse society. 

But have we exchanged one Heile Welt for another?

I suspect, looking at this year’s selection of Christmas ads, that we have.

Advertising has moved from material or appearance-related aspiration to what I’d call emotional aspiration. 

People in ads these days - from tiny tots to great-grandparents  - are caring and generous. Inclusive, tolerant and kind. Feisty and resilient. Empathetic and compassionate.

But I can bet you that these models of new EQ standards make some people feel as inadequate as the impossibly slender models of the last century’s beauty standards (by the way, I’ve always wondered if there's some ministry hidden away somewhere busily setting all these standards that the new advertising is so keen to disrupt and smash).

This kind of advertising is no more “authentic” than the stuff from the last Heile Welt. Real homes are messy, and so are real people, emotionally. On a good day, I can be a model of empathy and compassion, but on other days I can be downright spiteful and pig-headed. It’s called being human.

I don’t mind a bit of emotional depth in advertising, but I’d ask agencies to be more honest - or even authentic - about what they’re producing. 

Good story-telling that pulls at the heartstrings is nothing to be ashamed of - but just don’t pretend that it’s real life.   

A heart-warming idea

How often do you see an idea that deftly combines human emotion, the latest technology and doing good for society that's also absolutely on-brand? Not so often.

The idea "Memory Lane" from the energy-provider Stockholm Exergi and their agency Accenture Interactive does all that. The claim (or maybe it's the purpose) of the brand is "Together we make Stockholm warmer" - which can of course be interpreted in both physical and emotional terms.

The technology is reversed-engineered AI voice, so that rather than you asking your voice assistant for information, it will ask you questions - about your early memories, your first love - and record the conversation, eventually capturing this in a book. The agency placed 10 Google Home devices in the homes of people aged from 75 right up to 101-year-old Ingegerd, so that they could tell the stories of their lives.

It's a brilliant idea. Of course you can argue that this would have been perfectly possible to do ten or even thirty years ago, with dictaphones and interviewers.

But. Sometimes the barrier to actually doing something isn't the idea, or the will to do it. It's something purely practical - the expense, the time-consumption, the hassle.

This is a perfect example of how AI can work with human emotion and intelligence, accelerating and supporting it, rather than replacing it.

Macho Metamorphosis

"Grandpop" from "The Al-Eden Emergency"

I'm not going to wade in with my tuppence worth on the Gillette ad, suffice to say a couple of things. It's yet another prime example of this, employing the good old Procter & Gamble problem-solution formula, with a bit of band-wagon-jumping thrown in.

In addition, it's more ammunition for those who consider "Purpose" per se at best a fluffy marketing buzz word. But isn't it time to distinguish between "purpose-driven ad campaigns" (take a popular social issue and churn out a film that will polarise opinion/get lots of YouTube hits) and "purpose-driven brands" (everything the brand does is driven by its unique purpose, which is related to the product/service/experience the brand offers).

I wonder what Unilever make of their arch rival's attempt? I first blogged 3 years ago on the Lynx/Axe turnaround in the direction of Find Your Magic. Here's a Lynx film from a little while ago as part of the brand campaign:



I find the Lynx/Axe approach infinitely better than Gillette creatively,  but to me the strategy still feels awfully generic. It could have been hung on any number of brands targeting a broad audience of men. I fear that "male empowerment" will become as much of a cliche as "female empowerment" has become for brands over the last few years.

I do wonder whether the vogue for this men/women marketing en masse isn't just a little lazy.

Take this man:

He's famous for not holding back the tears.
He's done brilliant things.
He's even done heroic things.
But he's also been accused of sexual assault and racism.
He has (or has had) a number of mental illnesses.
But he has probably done unacceptable things just for the heck of it.

People are complex, and putting all men/women in the same box with a big "toxic" or "victim" label on it doesn't get us anywhere.

I'd like to see brands looking to their product, service, experience and values to find their unique purpose, and using that to drive all they do. And it doesn't have to be about the latest Twitterati issue.

If your brand does have a large proportion of men in its user base, how about looking at some masculine values that may be due for a revival (or maybe they never went away): courage, honour, strength, grit, decency, loyalty, respect.

Or are there no more (brand) heroes any more?

You can do magic

One of the strangest phrases to have crept into the marketing vocabulary in recent years is "data-driven insights." Now, I'm not keen on "insight" with the added "s", but it's the contradiction between "data-driven" and "insight" that I find tricky.

Firstly, there's the implication that no human mind is involved, that the data is crunched or analysed in a machine and the insights (sic) are churned out at the other end.

Then there's the suggestion that the insights are somehow superior in quality, and possibly more robust, as they come from data, rather than being plucked out the airy-fairy ether.

And wrapped up in all this is assumption that these superior insights, untouched by the human mind, represent absolute truths.

The few "data-driven insights" I've seen have been blindingly obvious statements which have nevertheless been backed up by an analysis of gadzillions of data points. But having that back-up somehow imbues the finding with a tremendous weight and importance that it wouldn't have had if some planner person had simply stated it.

AI is only so good at recognising patterns in data. To me, the skill of the planner is to combine rational thinking with other modes of perception - be it intuition, experience of the senses or the emotions. It's all of these combined that add up to true insight. And just because we can't measure something, or gather squillions of data points on it doesn't mean it's not important.

As the author Phillip Pulmann eloquently expresses in this article, a touch of magic belongs in our world.

DO shoot me - I'm the piano player, or composer, or somebot

I've remarked on these pages often recently about the modern tendency to throw pull-on-the-heartstrings plinky piano music into advertising to evoke the "made me cry" reaction.

Here's a prime example, and here's the plinky piano music's depressing partner-in-crime - the ominous cello music. And here's an ad that takes the mick out of it all.

Seems I am not the only one who's crying with inappropriate laughter at all this tear-duct-squeezing mawkish music.

Here's what could have been a clever creative idea, ruined by the execution, particularly the plonky-plinky soundtrack. As the writer says, "best use of Generic Sad Piano Film Trailer Score #647" - could be a new award. There are enough contenders.

I blame all those clever people who suddenly discovered that human beings don't make decisions primarily based on their rational thoughts, but on their feelings, ergo we have to make an "emotional connection."

But why do emotions always have to be morose and mournful? Whatever happened to the jolly jingles of yore? I still remember them decades afterwards, and if that's not an emotional connection, what is?

So go ahead, shoot that plinky piano player. And I don't feel in the least bit mean or cruel saying that as in all likelihood it's just a robot anyway.