The Search For The Mummified Baboon - or That My Life Should Come To This

Today, I visited the British Museum with my eight-year-old son (I know, I don't look old enough) and my mother (nor does she, good genes, innit). Neither of us were sponsored by P&G, but we set our faces against this crashing disappointment and made our way to Bloomsbury.


First, the tube. Living as we do to the west of London, our Metropolitan line journey took us past Wembley, where there was some sort of football match on, and we were accompanied for part of our journey by a troop of West Ham fans singing about forever blowing bubbles, as is their wont, the considerable remains of a McDonald's and innumerable empty cans and bottles which rumbled their way up and down the train as we rattled our way into town.


London was busy.  And it was my least favourite kind of busy - busy with tourists.  You know, those people who don't know that you walk on the left and stand on the right on the Underground escalators.  Gah.

Roof-tastic British Museum

Anyway, we hurled and burled our way through the crowds to the British Museum.  Past the signs saying, "Don't sit on the steps" and the people sitting on the steps we went, to the information desk where the most cheerful woman in the world was extremely friendly to us.  We decided we'd like to see the Egyptians (my eight-year-old wanted "to learn more about hieroglyphics") and were handed a photocopy of the Sailing The Nile Hamlyn Family Trail booklet.  Clearly every other bugger had had the same idea, because they were fresh out of the actual booklet.


And off we set, to Room 65, where we were to find gold rings, logs of ebony wood, a monkey, gold nuggets (small lumps), giraffe tails, leopard skins, a baboon and some lumps of red jasper, as well as a sphinx, whose mood we had to describe.  The booklet photocopy warned us that case numbers are "small and high up on the glass" - in other words, perfect for an eight-year-old to find.  If "perfect" means "next to bloody impossible".  We hunted out most of the things, decided the sphinx looked "relaxed" (despite the two cobra on his forehead - the sphinx was a dude).


Into the next room, 64, where half of the things weren't in the cases they said they were.  Still, we found the game and the hippo furniture leg and looked at some skeletons (you can't go to the British Museum without looking at a skeleton, it is illegal).

That must've taken bottle

The next room, 63, was heaving with rucksacks attached to people, as several tours had converged.  The overwhelming odour was body, a veritable wall of smell.  Weaving through the cases, trying to find the numbers on them whilst not breathing, was tricky.  The temptation to raise an umbrella in the air a la every tour guide in the place and see how many tourists I could collect was almost overwhelming, but I figured I wouldn't know what to do with them once I had them, so, reluctantly, I left it (this time - I expect I'll do it one day).  We found the coffin with the eyes on (so the dead man could see out) and the wooden neck rest and all the other things on this page and were Quite Pleased with ourselves.


Then room 62 and the search for the mummified animals.  Ibis - tick.  Cat - tick.  Crocodile - tick.  Falcon - tick.  Bull - tick.  Baboon - nowhere to be seen.


And it occurred to me that this obsession with the dead, their comfort in the afterlife and all the pomp and ceremony afforded to it by the Egyptians was a colossal waste of time.  I wondered what they would have invented if they'd had simple burials in wooden boxes and not done all that mucking about with building and stocking pyramids.  Maybe they'd have invented electricity.  And the internet.  Perhaps they would have said they were "on-Nile" rather than "on-line"...  I realised my attention span was waning (it's gnat-like at the best of times) and we made our way to the gift shop, which is almost bigger than the museum.  En route, we saw the Rosetta Stone, which helped us to identify the Rosetta Stone keyring, the Rosetta Stone fridge magnet, the Rosetta Stone tie, the Rosetta Stone jigsaw, the Rosetta Stone coasters, the Rosetta Stone pen, the Rosetta Stone notebook, the Rosetta Stone paperweight, the Rosetta Stone... - oh, you get the picture.


But we never did find the sodding baboon.

"Proud Sponsor Of Mums". No. Really No.

This evening, I saw an advert.


One of those nostalgia-filled ones with the mawkish music that attempt to twang your childhood memory heartstrings, trying to make you fair vibrate with lost-youth yearnings and then empty your wallets in the general direction of the cynical fuckers who made the ad.


Vodafone have tried it with Yoda.

Yodafone. Heh.

Because we all need a little help from a Jedi Master to use a mobile phone, seemingly.  Complicated they are, fail you will, young Padawan.  Or something.  I think I missed the point of the ad.  Yoda's going to help me transfer my contacts if I buy a new phone. In my estimation, gone down he has.  Although, being an animated creation, he probably loses no sleep over that.


But on to tonight's festival of sentimental bullshit and the bubbling rage it provoked in me.


Procter & Gamble (now restyled as P&G, possibly fearing that the "Proctologist & Gambler" undertones of their actual name didn't make a particularly appealing brand - I mean, who wants to take chances with their colorectal specialist these days?) have a new campaign.


And it pulls together all those wonderful brand marketing wins:

• young child trying hard
• slightly older child trying hard
• young man succeeding
• his mother sobbing tears of happiness that she'd mopped all the wounds, dried his tears when he didn't win and whipped the lad every time he said, "But, Mum, I don't even like running!"
• the Olympics

Obligatory swelling music accompanies a series of clips from a young athlete's life, his mother, as the P&G strapline would have it, "never the focus but always there".


And then a load of P&G product logos and the killer slogan at the end, "P&G - Proud sponsor of mums".


Proud...sponsor...of...mums.  There's a website and everything.  All about how mums are the "boss" of P&G.  Some marketing fanny or other from the company had this to say:

"We're using our voice to celebrate and reward mums and recognise their sacrifices."

A bigger load of patronising horseshit I'd be hard-pushed to find.  A company that makes nappies, washing powder and face cream wants to use their "voice" to sponsor mums?  Because mums are the sum total of nappies, washing powder and face cream and want a company that makes them to celebrate them, of COURSE.


The fanny continued:

"Today's consumers expect transparency, authenticity and honesty from the products they buy and the companies that make them and unifying all of our brands into a holistic advertising campaign is the perfect way to meet this expectation and grow our business."

Are P&G going to sponsor me to be a mum?  Is my life changed, enriched, rewarded by knowing that a big company has a voice they're using to say, "Hey, Mums are pretty cool, you know!"


Because none of us knew that, did we?  Not a clue that our mums need to be celebrated, until a company that makes soap told us.  Thank FUCK for P&G.


I'm looking forward to the next P&G campaign.  I'm told they're focusing on religion for it and toying with the slogan "P&G - the Pope's Catholic, because we let him be" and one for woodland creatures, with the strapline, "P&G - Bears can shit in our wood, we're magnanimous like that".


There's a wider point here.  Brands in general are so focused and keen on getting our attention that they have become like the irksome bell-end you avoid in the pub, because they're earnest and a bit cunty and don't half bang on about how brilliant they are.  They are shitting themselves that nobody watches adverts any more because we all have on-demand telly squirted directly onto our retinas by ever-so-clever tellyboxes and mobile devices which neatly snip out anything that might be trying to sell something to us.  Because, of course, unless we see a clever bastard slick as fuck advertising campaign for, er, soap, we will forget it exists and the whole world will end up smelling of knob cheese and sebum.


But there is nothing more lazy and patronising than a brand that tries to sell to "mums".  We are not a homogeneous group of passive creatures, grateful that a brand is using its voice to appreciate us.  Well, some of you might be - but this one isn't.  And that rather neatly proves my case.  I don't want to be thanked by a company simply for having procreated.  If I'm doing a good job as a mum, that's its own reward - and my children will appreciate me.  If I'm not, then, frankly, a brand shouldn't be celebrating me anyway.


So, P&G, stop trying to shoehorn your marketing spewings into the relationship I have with my children. Quit with your authentic soft focus nostalgia flatulence and simply say, "Here is some soap powder/face cream.  We think it's jolly good and it smells nice too.  You might like to try it next time you see it in a shop somewhere."

Bill Hicks, where are you?

PS - I'm open to sponsorship deals from household names.  Because I like irony.  And goldy.  And silvery.  And, my favourite, papery-with-the-Queen's-head-on.  Interested?