Aspies For Freedom

Bah i've got a 1973/4 newspaper somewhere, my brother has it ;p love the ads/prices.

Malus Mundi ;p

*Mallus :p

I remember reading a magazine for the 1960's. There was an advertisement for caffeine pills which calls them "friendly stimulants''.

Execpt for all those messy add-ons.

Mum sent me an English Women's Weekly from 1953 and I must take photos of some of the pages because there are some really interesting ads for various products such as teething gels, deodorant soaps, home permanents and so on.

The deodorant one was kind of funny. It was about this guy wanting a promotion but his boss telling him he didn't have the "people skills" to carry it off, even though he was a top worker in every other way. Then, he was at a party and his family GP started talking to him about washing properly and recommended he get some lifebuoy soap and give it a go (I can still remember lifebuoy soap as a small child but that was in the late 60's not the 50's).

Anyway, after he started with the Lifebuoy, he got his promotion and a raise and his wife was very happy with both him and the family doctor.

Er, not quite. 50 years or so ago, it was considered very rude to tell somebody they smelt of B.O.

Well, here it is - the ad about the whiffy guy.

IMG]http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff129/Cowboys-07/LettertoaWife.jpg[/IMG]

Ah, I don't know why that didn't work. I'll try again:

IMG]http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff129/Cowboys-07/LettertoaWife.jpg[/IMG]

Oh bum! I don't know why the picture won't come up on the screen.

Thanks, Tonic. There were also some classic laxative ads in that magazine, plus various "tonics" for "tired blood" were popular. I think they could have drawn some fumes coming out from under Smith's arms. Smoking seemed to be much more socially acceptable in those days than it is now.

I don't have many particularly happy memories of 1994. I was 19 and in my first year at uni (second year by the autumn), having recently experienced the bizarre initiation ritual known as Raisin Weekend in the first term. I had various worries piling up about the future both short- and long-term. E.g. whom I was going to share a flat with the following year (having noticed how quickly my hallmates had already formed themselves into flatshare groups), what I was going to do with the looming long vacation (I sent off a few speculative letters asking for work experience but received nothing but standard rejection letters), and how weird it felt that so many of my university contemporaries were getting engaged.  There was this growing feeling of "Is this it? Is this all university life has to offer?" and wondering how that much-quoted line from Brideshead Revisited* could ever possibly turn out true for me (it didn't).

I ended up spending the first fortnight of the summer vac on a working holiday at Sunseed Desert Technology (http://www.sunseed.org.uk) - the first and so far only time I've been to Spain. Felt left out there because most of the other volunteers were on longer placements and the work they were doing tied in with the degree courses they were doing back in the UK. I remember writing in my feedback form: "What place for a mathematics with logic & philosophy of science student?" One volunteer, an American student, demanded to know "What have you done with your life??" (good question) when I told her I'd never held down a job, and made me feel all the more inadequate by rattling off all the places she was going to visit in Europe.

* "You'll find you spend half your second year shaking off all the undesirable friends you made in your first."

My university had been a university since 1410 AD - St Andrews. I was frequently asked: "Where's that, is that in Scotland?" That was long before Prince William put it on the map, of course.

What I found most surprising about the newly-engaged couples was that in almost every case I hadn't even known they were going out together. I wonder whether it was because couples who aren't sleeping together (as I'm assuming this devout Christians didn't, hence the urge to get wed) display less intimate body language in public. I remember a girl at high school remarking on a couple across the road: "First time I've seen them holding hands - they must have slept together last night!"

Believe it or not, getting married at 23 or 24 isn't that young for women. Not when it was common a few decades ago for them to get married between 18 and 21.

Well it seemed strange to me, mainly because I'd come from a academically selective single-sex high school where the M-word wasn't even mentioned. That wasn't the only difference between school and university. My school was non-denominational, but because of the geographical area it served, about 40% of the pupils were Jewish. It was very trendy to be Jewish, or to pretend to be, but Christianity was definitely uncool. Whenever we sang hymns in assembly, any verse that referred to Jesus or the Trinity was left out. (For instance: the verse in "Lord of all hopefulness" that goes "Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith / Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe...") And then I came to St Andrews and was amazed that my hall had unabashedly Christian grace before formal dinner - "Sit nomen Domini benedictum per Jesu Christe salvatorem nostrum".