Pleistocene toothpaste for the sabre-toothed man

It is the little things in life that get me through the day - like toothpaste. I'm pretty picky about my toothpaste and have a brand loyalty to Aquafresh, although not so great I would want to write a product review.

For weeks on end it provides little more entertainment than you might expect from brushing your teeth. But as the tube begins to run out, when you have pushed all that you can towards the nozzle, this is when the tension begins to build.

Without acknowledging as much, Gill and I become engaged in a kind of "brush to the death," each of us trying to extract the last trace of toothpaste.

This battle of wills goes on for weeks, far beyond the time you would imagine that the toothpaste would be exhausted. The other day we had reached the limit, the final "paste off." The tube looked finished, the nozzle hollow and no amount of ordinary squeezing could produce that precious final smidgen of paste. Only brute force and some careful manipulation of the tube enticed enough paste to coat the brush. Triumph.

It was with a sense of disbelief and defeat, therefore, that next morning I saw the empty tube still there by the sink, striking an almost mocking pose. It was emptier than empty, apparently beyond exploitation. Finished. How had she done it?

Slumped in despair, I picked up the tube and studied it. Shook my head, admired her resolve. There was no way back this time. Or was there? I smoothed the already smooth flanks once again with the side of a comb, pushed in the shoulders of the tube, manipulating them every which way before, with Zen-like concentration, stabbing each of my index fingers in to the back of the nozzle with an almost superhuman effort, I achieved the seemingly impossible, gathering a final tiny tear-drop of white paste to scrape across the brush.

Exhausted and emotionally drained,I returned to the bedroom. "How did you manage to get some more out of the tube last night?" I asked Gill.

"I couldn't," she said, "I had to brush my teeth without paste."

I nodded and felt good about things. In these days when men are giving ground everywhere - see this example too - it's good to know that the hunter-gathering instincts have not deserted us. Someone has to put toothpaste on the table.

They might not register in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but these subliminal primeval behaviours form a direct link to a time when Mammoths and Sabre-toothed tigers roamed the land.

It's been a long road from the Pleistocene to the consumer society of today but the thread remains unbroken. Next time you squeeze that tube, just listen for the roar.

The joys of cinema

"Where do you want to sit? Middle?" says the bored-looking ticket-seller at our local cinema. She doesn't look up from her cash register.

Almost everyone, it seems, opts for seats somewhere in the middle of the seating area. Why this flight to the middle? Is it a safety thing? Is that where you get the best view? Personally I quite like sitting at the front but I am as programmed as everyone else to seek the middle ground. "Middle," I bleat like every other sheep.

Armed with our numbered tickets we grope our way down the darkened aisle trying to find our seats. Once upon a time there were people with torches who showed you to your seats.

I recall that in France at one time it was customary to tip the usher. I did not do so once in a Paris cinema, either out of ignorance or meanness, and received a sharp jab to the ribs from the "assistant" who fled in the dark.

Today, however, there is no usher so we get down on our knees in the gloom, trying to make out row J. I count the seats to numbers 12 and 13 that are already occupied so the people must get up and sit elsewhere. We claim our places to find that the cinema is almost empty.

You can't win in these circumstances. To avoid accusations of churlishness we have gone to sit elsewhere in the past only to be confronted by another pair of "anal retentives" who move us on. And once you have joined the ranks of the voluntary itinerant you are condemned like the wandering albatross to scavenge from seat to seat, always glancing sideways, waiting for that "tap in the dark."

So we claim our seats in the middle of a small clutch of other cinema goers tightly bunched around us, ignoring the swathes of empty seats elsewhere. The Afro haircut went out with the Ark but it is enjoying a temporary revival in the seat in front creating a dark "grassy knoll" that obliterates any foreground action in the film. They should sell scissors at the ticket desk.

The cheap adverts for local tailors' shops and "everything for your wedding" have finished but the main feature hasn't started yet and we're watching one of those entertaining Orange telephone advertisements that remind us to turn off our mobile phones lest we disturb our fellow cinema goers. That's rich, that is.

You couldn't hear a mobile phone ringing above the noise of rustling crisp packets, the scrunch of popcorn and the slosh of Coca Cola that is spilled in such quantities, your feet stick to the floor. There is a fart in the darkness and sniggering. I am conducting a silent duel with the bony elbowed woman beside me for mastery of the arm rest.

Meanwhile my neck has stretched to giraffe proportions creating similar discomfort for those behind me. By the end of the film I'm ready for physio but I'm not going anywhere because we're hemmed-in on either side by people who like to watch the credits. Why do people watch the credits in cinemas? I blame those trendy comedies that put a funny bit at the end.

In spite of all this, possibly because of it - some innate perversity that defies explanation - I still love the cinema. All human life is there, anonymous and anti-social, yet clinging to an even stronger social programming that primes our urge to belong.

Another Donkin on cinema.

Tension builds to fan the kipper

Christmas Eve in Waitrose: people were crawling over the shelves like locusts in one last manic rush. We called at the butcher's for the turkey and a joint of pork and I drove over to Guildford to get some flowers. I like doing the flower arranging at Christmas.

By 10.30am everything was done. The sales had already started in Guildford. It's as if people can't wait to get things over with before they move on to the next thing. Christmas is a time to savour things, to take time out and have some long conversations that shouldn't need to end in a hurry.

Yet, according to some reports, some 3.7m people will be shopping online on Christmas Day. I can understand how some get itchy feet on Boxing Day after 24-hours with the relatives, but there really ought to be a law against shopping on Christmas Day.

Tension is building for our annual "fan the kipper" contest. Will the silver rabbit go to Yorkshire this year, or will it stay in Surrey?

Otherwise, after getting rid of the mother of bad moods that has made life miserable for the rest of the family these past few days, I am beginning to mellow. The dog is clean and white and all is well with the world. That just leaves me time to wish all those in blogging land, wherever you are, whatever your persuasion, my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. If there is anything you have missed in that last trip to the shops, forget it, it doesn't matter. The best things in life are improvised.

Postscript: The Silver Rabbit resides again in Surrey after various protests of foul play against the eventual winner (me) were rejected by the organising body (also me). There were fears that uncertainty over the outcome could drag on in to the next year, undermining the sport of kipper fanning, but the organiser chose to draw a line under this year's controversies reminiscent of the damaging kipper knobbling scandal that marred contests in the late 1990s. In a brief statement, I said: "The future of the sport is more important than any petty squabbling."

Hiding the naked truth

You, like me, have probably been listening to the Pogues' Christmas song, Fairytale of New York, for years without noticing the words very much. But the BBC takes lyrics seriously and, after taking its time about it, decided to bleep out the word "faggot" from on-air transmissions. The censorship was short-lived since listeners complained and the BBC did a sharpish U-turn so that we can all enjoy the f-word once more.

The BBC has form for this kind of thing. I remember when it banned Je T'aime in 1960s, the Sex Pistols' rather disrespectful God Save the Queen in the 1970s, and Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood in the 1980s.

But I had not realised until reading about it the other day that George Formby had upset the BBC censors with his Little stick of Blackpool rock. It came as quite a shock.

Given this history of British prudishness I don't suppose we should be so surprised that the National Health Service is canvassing people about its plans to feature some lifelike naked images of men and women in an online diagnostic service. It has two versions, one with all the reproductive organs where they should be, and one where the man looks as if he's wearing some flesh-coloured Calvin Klein's. I had thought this "fig-leaf mentality" had died with the end of the Victorian era. Not so.

Finding a match

You don’t come across many Donkins. There are some people I know who would regard that as a good thing and I don’t blame them. But there are one or two Donkins I have met over the years, such as this chap. There is even a town called Donkin in Nova Scotia.

This week I’m sad to report the passing of two Donkins, one quite well known and one, my uncle Cyril, who would have been known by all those on his Bradford postal round before he retired.

As a young child I thought uncle Cyril was super human because of his handkerchief trick. He would hand over a matchstick that he would ask me to place inside his handkerchief. He would then ask me to snap the match within the cloth. Opening the handkerchief in a flourish, he would reveal a whole matchstick. This trick (it's great with very young children) had me puzzled for years. Uncle Cyril had a great sense of humour and I’m sad that he’s gone.

I was also sad to see that Mike Donkin, the BBC journalist, had died. Many, many times over the years people have asked me if I was related to “that Mike Donkin” on the TV or radio. We spoke on the phone once or twice over the years when our reporting interests had coincided, but we had no relatives in common.

We did, however, share a love of news reporting. He was a good journalist as this obituary testifies. The BBC needs people like Mike Donkin.

Enough of Donkins, I’m thinking, but I have one last note. I was contacted a week ago by an Alfreda Doonkeen who lives in Oklahoma City in the US and who wanted to know if I was descended from a cattle farmer in South America.

Some time in the 19th century, she says, an Alfred Donkin arrived in Mexico. She is wondering if he might have been related to her grandfather, Alfred Doonkeen and whether I might be “sharing some of his DNA.” I have no idea. I haven’t found any Donkins in my family history who have lived outside Yorkshire, apart from a few of those in my generation, not that I’ve looked very hard.

But this Alfred Donkin intrigues me. I can imagine him turning up in Mexico, to be greeted by the locals as Meester Doonkeen. As a Donkin (anything to make life easier could be a family motto) he most probably changed his name to go with the flow. I can see him now sitting in the dust with his poncho and sombrero, a handkerchief in one hand, a matchstick in the other.....

Mr Smith's Christmas trees and a question for royalty

The newspapers keep telling me that people are not spending this Christmas. Someone should tell our local garden centre. They had a thousand trees just over a week ago and now they've almost all gone. We found ourselves picking over the scraps this morning.

I couldn't believe the prices: £30 for anything of any size. Last year they were half that price. I like going to this garden centre because the man who founded it, Mr Smith, always asks me the same question in a voice that is slow but quite high pitched. In fact the conversation is always the same brief exchange.

"How's your garden?" he asks.

"It's doing fine," I say.

"Oh, I am pleased," says he.

I've been going to his garden centre for nearly 20 years and the wording of the conversation has never changed. In fact it's such a reassuring exchange of pleasantries that I'm thinking of sending it to the Queen who might like to have it up her sleeve as an alternative to "Have you come far?" and "What do you do?"

On the other hand, unlike Mr Smith, she could not assume that whoever she was addressing would have a garden. But I suppose it would be a safe subject to raise with the Queen without seeming impertinent.

"How is one's garden?"

"One's garden is doing fine."

"Oh I am pleased."

I'm wondering if there could be a market for a small "book of pleasantries for use in encounters with royalty."

"How's your garden?" could be a tricky one for Prince Charles since there is a risk that it could lead to a full-blooded conversation and that might not be welcome, particularly if it strays in to awkward topics such as the wisdom or otherwise of talking to one's plants. Then there is the GM crops debate. Before you know it you could have unwittingly caused a diplomatic incident.

Taboo subjects: dogs, Annie Leibovitz, the BBC, Nicholas Witchell, League Against Cruel Sports.

Safe subjects: the weather, geography, gardens (not Prince Charles), occupation (as long is it is fairly sedentary and not pole dancing or journalism - see Nicholas Witchell).

Mr Smith has now passed the business on to his son who has never once asked me about my garden or anything else for that matter. But I still see his father. In reality my garden is a mess but I would never tell Mr Smith. That would spoil everything.

Workworld begins to bite

With 200 blogs under my belt I'm beginning to suffer from blog fatigue. There have a been a few days recently when I have started a blog and thought: what the hell? Like that day back in the 1950s when a radio newsreader on the Light programme announced "There is no news today." Those were the days.

Things that gripped me in the train carriage on a morning have faded by the time I get to my screen on an evening and just lately I have been travelling up and down to London a little bit more than I had planned.

Last week, for instance, I had marked out every day in my diary to got to the British Library and do some book research. Then other things intervened - a lunch here, a meeting there and before I knew it the precious library week was lost.

If I'm not careful this free agent lifestyle is going to begin looking a little too much like a job again.

Two of the days last week, however, were spent doing voluntary work, one judging the annual Work Foundation Workworld awards for journalists and the other attending a trustee board meeting at Earthwatch Europe.

The media awards were as revealing as ever. It's a shame that the deliberations must be kept in confidence.

Earthwatch has been experiencing quite a few changes as it begins to tackle a big new delivery programme funded by HSBC bank. The US-side of the charity has been struggling to fill places in the programme as travelling becomes less attractive for Americans because of the weak dollar and continuing fears over international terrorism.

But the charity I'm sure is robust enough to overcome these problems. In the meantime its work with companies and the learning modules it is developing for employees are taking it in to some exciting areas in employee learning and development. Companies that are trying to come to terms with the growing environmental issues of our time can and do find a well of inspiration and expertise in the Earthwatch family.

Earthwatch programmes are open to everyone. I have been on two in the past, in Poland and in Madagascar. I'd like Gill to go on another one but haven't persuaded her yet. The last one she attended involved catching crocodiles in the Okavango delta and I'm wondering if she thought I was trying to get rid of her.

Restoring Nelson's river

Thames Water has agreed to spend £500,000 on restoring and improving the River Wandle over the next 5 years, after the company admitted responsibility for killing thousands of fish when bleach leaked in to the river in September.

The Anglers’ Conservation Association that led the negotiations with Thames Water, says it is the biggest settlement in the ASA’s history.

The Wandle, that today flows through an urban landscape in south London, is a historic chalk stream where Admiral Lord Nelson once fished and where Frederic Halford perfected the art of fishing with a dry fly.

The funding has been apportioned in the following way:
• £7,000 project funding for a local education project;
• £10,000 in compensation for the two angling clubs;
• £30,000 to meet the costs of restocking and an ongoing survey to assess damage to the river’s ecology;
• £200,000 core funding for the Wandle Trust to include support for the cost of an employee who will raise additional project funding to deliver access and habitat improvements along the length of the river;
• £250,000 over 5 years for a restoration fund to support local projects to improve the river environment;
• Investment in failsafe measures at Beddington Sewage Treatment works to prevent pollution like this happening again in the future;

The ASA says the announcement will have no bearing on any future criminal prosecution of Thames Water by the Environment Agency for the incident.

Theo Pike (yes this really is his name), Trustee of the Wandle Trust and Senior Vice President of the Wandle Piscators said: “September 17 was a catastrophe for the Wandle, but we are now delighted to be entering into this 5-year habitat rehabilitation project with Thames Water and the Environment Agency. “

Nothing can bring back the lost fish but the agreement should mean that the river’s restoration has suffered a setback rather than a disastrous reversal. Moreover it underpins an important corporate commitment to river health and a new sense of partnership that looks promising for the future.


Corporate responsibility and river pollution.