A Finger of Fudge

I have been examining the deeply-rooted commercial themes that lie a couple of millimetres below my consciousness and inhabit everything I make and do and think.. Equus-style - though thankfully I am spared the urge to brutalise farm animals.

Because of their ubiquity and prevalance and their relatively short life, jingles place you (me) (us) in a time and a space and a culture very specifically. A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat. Were the adults who sold us this line aware of it's playground significance as we used it gleefully to ridicule the desires of paedophile homosexuals ? Were adults sussed enough to understand that we knew we were prey ? Did they comprehend the anal/manual reference as clearly as we did ? Did they really set out to sell chocolate bars on the back of this ? I know mine was not the only school that used the ad in this way.

Not all of them conjure up perversion. There are some disturbingly homespun sickly tunes lurking in there. I particularly remember Shredded Wheat, Britain (it wasn't UK then, UK hadn't been invented) mid-70s. "There are 2 men in my life, to one I am a mother, to the other I'm a wife, and I give them both the best, with natural Shredded Wheat".

Shredded Wheat was brittle, tasteless, digusting, made bearable only by copious quantities of milk and sugar and cups of tea. Shreddies much better. But the song ! To have a mother like that ! To be a doted-upon only child ! The acoustic hippy guitar music chimed out into my young soul, cramped and crowded and disregarded in my suburban home.. can I ever exorcise this demon ? I will have to record it.