Hoping that I would have a few hours of relaxation during my travels I went DVD shopping in the UK and bought some TV box set thingies. Well…….I flew out on January 20 and yesterday February 18……I watched the first two episodes of a series called Mad Men. The series set in an advertising agency in the Fifties and Sixties is hugely popular in the UK and I guess it’s the same in North America. Demonstrates that we are now more excited by the past than the future or the present. This makes particular sense in an economic climate best summed up by the phrase “You’ve never had it so bad,” in which the evening news resembles a serving of grey gruel, heavily seasoned with gloom.
Heidi tells me women’s pages are bursting with Mad Men fashion, featuring models in pencil skirts and skin-tight sweaters in the style of the series’ inimitable secretary, Joan Holloway, a girl with more curves than the aft of the Carnival Dream. I have to admit that it has left me brooding on what tremendous fun it would be to chain-smoke and openly ogle the office trainee without anyone suing you for sexual harassment, and never once be expected to do the washing-up at home. For me it was like watching a really brilliant commercial. It was slicker than a lap dancer’s pole, smoother than a pair of silk underpants and as moreish as Carnival’s chocolate melting cake. If only we could stick our heads in another decade for long enough, we think, this one with its credit crunch………. might bugger off.
(more…)
