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I don’t know what it’s like these days … it’s been many a long year since I bothered to purchase a copy and the odd one or two I did pick up some time around ten years or so ago, with a view to investigating, didn’t impress me … but …
… in the early 1990s, Viz comic went through a golden era:
Reading an article about the American tradition of gender reveal parties ¹ today, I stumbled upon the following exchange and was instantly put in mind of it (it would have fit right in on the Letterbocks page of said august periodical).
MrMopp: "The US tradition of disclosing a baby’s sex through ever more bizarre blue/pink antics has spread to Britain."
Has it? And it's a tradition, you say? Crikey, that's passed me right by. Thanks for the heads up. I love tradition.
(Mind you, I thought a baby shower was a shower. For babies. It was only when I tried to buy one in town, for a present, did I realise I had made a silly mistake. Mrs. Mopp and I still howl with laughter every time I share this anecdote with friends, neighbours, holidaymakers and even complete strangers at bus stops.)
In fact, I'm laughing right now just thinking about the look on the poor shop assistant's face. "Aye, aye, we've got a right one here," she must've thought! Sandra was her name. "Not Sandra Bullock!" says I, quick as a flash. "No, just Sandra Smith. Unfortunately," says she, a little wistfully I thought, although she was still smiling. Nice girl. Used to work at Wilkinsons on the High Street before it closed down. Her mother used to knit mittens for Oxfam.
We still send her a Christmas card every year and I always draw a little picture of me asking "could I see your baby showers, please?" I'd love to see her face when she opens it. Sandra, not her mum. She died years ago sadly, from smoking. In bed. Tragic really but wool is very flammable. Still, it's an ill wind that blows no good. Oxfam must've done very nicely thank-you selling all her jigsaws and crocheted tea cosies. I don't know who got the Toby Jugs...rumour was the manager kept them to one side, if you know what I mean. They never made their way to the shop floor, that's for sure. But I digress...
Baron Von Dominic IV: The Toby Jugs were shipped off to auction because someone decided they could raise more money that way. Apparently the collection included some very rare Jugs. But thats the way charity shops are going now, they used to serve a dual purpose of raising money and providing the less well off with somewhere to shop, and sometimes you could get some really good stuff, these days they are a lot more savvy, only yesterday I was in my local Save the Children looking at the vinyl records, gone are the days of picking up a mint condition original release of the Beatles White Album for 50p (and if you got another 2 records they only charged you for 2), you'd be lucky to find a warped 7" of Haddaways 1993 smash hit What Is Love for less than £1 these days.
MrMopp: I fear you're right. Just last week I found a lovely copy of Val Doonican's Greatest Hits Volume 1 AND 2 on a double cassette and they wanted two pounds for it! I'm a big fan, who isn't, but two quid?!! And the case was cracked, too! I said to Mrs. Mopp, "They'll end up going bust at this rate, you mark my words." And she did.
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¹ I could despair of the human race sometimes … really I could ².
² An American tradition? What … a ‘tradition’ that’s existed for all of as long as there have been ultrasound scanners? Wow!
