The latest campaign from ginger beer brewers Fentimans may not make the shortlist for Great Advertising Mistakes Of Our Time but it still boggles me.
Fentimans are rightly proud of their traditional beverages, and stress that 75 years ago all ginger beer was made the same way. But it seems strange to link this with the anniversary of Donoghue v Stevenson, well known to law students as a tale of negligence and gastro-enteritis.
...celebrate with us, the fame that snails have given Ginger Beer
I'm particularly bothered that they're running a competition with a prize of £7400 'via special bottles'. That would be special how?
Just call me picky, but I prefer the vegetarian option.
I leave that to those more knowledgeable and coherent on the subject. But it's only natural to be affected by events, especially after partying yesterday at the house of shy retiring Avedon Carol.
Here in Snailville I've been looking at ostensibly lighter matters, and was directed by Languagehat to this Chinese poetry site. Unable to resist even a non-Japanese poet with the name Su Shi, I found
Visiting the Temple of the God of Mercy on a Rainy Day
The silkworms grow old,
The wheat half yellow,
The rain falls unrestrained about the mountain.
The farmers cannot work the land,
Nor women gather mulberry,
The Immortals sit high in white robes in the hall.
Meanwhile, Renee Perelmutter at glosses.net rambles entertainingly and cites a Sumerian translation The Seven, including
They are strangers to pity, compassion is far from them
They are deaf to men's prayers, entreaties can't reach them
They are horses that grow to great size, that feed on mountains
They are the enemies of our friends
They feed on the gods
They tear up the highways they spread out over the roads
They are the faces of evil they are the faces of evil
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum Est
Pro patria mori.
Rattling off the last post, I completely forgot that March 1st was St Davids Day.
I'm not the sort of person who follows saints days, and last year I rather boggled London co-workers who were working up footballing enthusiasm for St George's. Perhaps it was mean to mention that he was patron saint for Canada, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Palestine and Portugal, and cities in Italy, Russia and Turkey. Not to mention herpes, leprosy and plague.
It's easy to find all this and more with the web, using pages like this one.
There are patron saints for all sorts of causes, though I thought it was a bit dodgy that Joseph's patronage covers people who fight communism. And while it was comforting to know that saintly patronage extends to poor helpless accountants, I don't really understand why invincible people need a patron saint.
Still, you have to admire the even handedness of patronising enemies of religion.