Now I was going to write a blog taking the piss out of Nigel Slater - for his Saturday morning tv program - the one where he claims to make 'simple delicious meals' out of things that he has lying around. Of course the culinary equivalent of the Wombles isn't talking about a slice of 2 day old pizza and half a jar of Helmans from 2008.
He wafts like a pastel breeze over to the spotless fridge where, by chance, he happens to have, 'just leftovers really' - the breast of a roast swan, filet of unicorn and a bit of cheese. Then it's out into his herb garden/magic kingdom for 'whatever is in season'/is just lying about and oh whoops I've accidentally made a quick simple meal that has Greg Wallace pushing his snout against the window like a starving urchin.
But that can wait.
I had finished writing an e-mail, using my g-mail account, and sent it. When up pops, unbidden from me, a little link. Now I know that if I want free e-mail I have to pay the price somewhere along the line, quid pro quo and all that. But it never used to happen and I could live with (by which I mean utterly ignore) the ads at the side of the page, but this is a bit much.
Secondly - this is what the link was advertising:
http://www.morphsuits.co.uk
Now I know what you want to know, because so did I. Why this ad ?
According to the pop up:
"This ad is based on e-mails from your mailbox"
I was suprised by this - as well, the e-mail I had just sent was replying to a friend telling him what time we would be arriving for lunch. Here's the text (with names deleted)
Hiya XXXXXX,
Looking at train timetables I can probably get back from Gloucester on Friday evening, so barring mishaps we will aim to get to yours for 12-1 on Saturday if that is ok ?
XXXXXX has her tea at between 5-6 so we will be aiming to get her back for then - I have no idea how long it will take to get to yours by car but assuming an hour - we will probably leave about 4ish.
Is there anything you would like us to bring ?
Now my friend and his wife are a perfectly normal couple. They don't as far as I am aware have a dungeon. Neither do I for that matter. So I am wondering why g mail in its wisdom thought I might want, or indeed need, a full lycra bodysuit ? I suppose it is some small consolation that it wasn't crotchless.
Fortunately it is possible (I have learned in the intervening minutes to 'opt out' of such 'personalised ads' - but you can I am assured, opt back in again. Which means they are still collecting data from you, they are just not funnelling you the results.
It's all pretty unsatisfactory and the only real solution I can see is to revert to letter writing for the purposes of correspondence. Back when I had to do letter writing every Saturday morning at school I bemoaned that it was unnecessary (this was largely because I was a day pupil at a school predominantly comprised of boarding pupils - my point was that I really did not need to write mummy a letter telling her what a splendid time I was having and how I had built a camp and gone to the Good Copy tea party because I was seeing her in a few hours - besides she's not a stupid woman and there's only so much horseshit of that kind you can be made to swallow). Little did I know.
On the other hand I can now use gmail as a purely recreational tool, concocting increasingly unlikely epistolary compositions to see what personalised ads I receive
I shall start by writing to an imaginary farm based penpal using the following words:
Stallion
Oilseed Rape
Fertilizer
Cock
Brassica Napus
I am sure you can think of your own - and if you are not the solitary Marc Singer obsessed Bulgarian who reads this, feel free to post some of your ad results
Cheers.
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