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Friday, July 25, 2008

Revelation!






Cerepol.

Never let it be said that all blogs were merely self indulgent opportunities for self opinionated persons to air their prejudices. (Though I for one don’t really see why they shouldn’t be.)

However, in the spirit of selfless devotion to the good of others I am determined to use this opportunity to fulfil one of the vain wishes of my father that I would justify my education and ‘do something useful.’ You have to understand that both my parents were teachers and so they naturally thought that entering that noble profession on my part was something of a dereliction of duty on theirs!

I have tried throughout my working life to encourage people to do things which were, in Ruskin’s heart-in-the-right-place-but-really-meaningless words “availing to good.” This has usually consisted in reading the right books and following a few simple rules viz.
1. The only dog one should ever contemplate owning is a yellow Labrador bitch.
2. Never own a dog.
3. Abominate Margaret Thatcher and all Her Works.

Actually rule number three was a very difficult (and totally unprofessional) one to inculcate into the young.

Indeed, I once asked a class which party they thought I voted for. There was no clear majority for any party but there were sizable minorities for Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem.

As each group put up their hands to show their understanding of my political tendencies the rest of the class howled their disbelief that they could be so simplistic as to think that I could possibly support the party that they thought was my political home.

They began to discuss me as if I were not there and, as they were a good class of pupils they began to speculate about the wider seas of political affiliation. One of two of the more adventurous had me voting Communist and a few others for Plaid Cymru. One pupil said that I didn’t even vote at all!

At the time I took this confusion to be an indication that my ‘political’ comments were sufficiently well balanced that I did not give a clear party political bias to my teaching.

Now, I’m not so sure: should a teacher be satisfied with confusion?

Anyway. The useful part of this blog is the word right at the top. Cerepol.

Saucepans which are suitable for gas, electric and induction usually have fairly thick bases and seem to be coated with some sort of ceramic material which makes them look good when you buy them and that sight has to last because as soon as you use them the bases become progressively grubbier. And, as Brillo pads seem to be a thing of the past and their New Man namby-pamby scourer replacements couldn’t take the veneer of New Labour you are condemned to see your once gleaming pans reduced to shoddy second hand shame.



But no! Now things are different! Thanks to Ceri I am able to tick off two things that I thought I would never be able to do:
1. Clean electric hobs
2. Clean the bottom of heavy base frying pans.

Cerepol. It sounds like a proprietary medication for one of the less salubrious areas of human activity; or perhaps a new international police organization or even an organic cereal. But it is none of these things.

It is actually a cleaner that works. Made by Hallmark, it is Australian, and it works. Nothing has worked before and this does. It is a revelation. It does what it says on the plastic bottle.

The fact that I am so amazed that it does so surely indicates the woeful lack of veracity of the usual run of products that I buy.

It’s a metaphor for life!

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