This is embarrassing, really embarrassing. It started innocently enough, I, like all kids in the '70s was on a constant lookout for distractions. What now seem like the most mundane of items could keep us enthralled for days, weeks!
One of the rarer distractions, just to give you a flavour of the degree of excitement that we’re talking about, was the occasional appearance in our kitchen of the Dairylea box. Now, the Dairylea box’s main feature was, possibly still is, that it was round. I say possibly is, I have no idea whether it is still for sale. That, of course, isn't true as I've just Googled it and………..of course, it's still available. My palate has been refined and has risen above such proletariat fodder to the dizzying heights of camembert or Moroccan goat’s cheese. That, by the way, is cheese made from Moroccan goats, well, their milk and not for Moroccan goats, although thinking about it, you had probably figured that out for yourself. You see this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, the population has been educated, admittedly not everyone and only to a small degree.
I was listening to one of my favourite podcast the other day, the Kermode and Mayo film review show on Radio Five. Kermode was reading out a suspiciously eloquent letter from a three-year-old, probably, and postulated that ‘generation by generation we are getting smarter,' now that as a theory is easily squashed by the "fact juggernaut”, that is the continued presence on the supermarket shelves of Dairylea.
Another interesting measure of how far we’ve come in the last few hundred years is that when Charles Darwin set off on the trip around the world on the Beagle, which later produced The Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection, he was 22 years old and more impressive, the man in charge of the ship that departed from England on the 5 year journey, Fitzroy was only 26. So as you can see, it’s not always an upward trajectory, otherwise, toddlers would be "inventing" alternatives to Dairylea and not writing into meaningless (sorry lads) radio shows.
I’ll get to my main point soon, but I must just mention that while Googling Dairylea I happened to notice a post, “What is Dairylea made from”. You may be surprised to know that one of the ingredients in Dairylea is cheese. Now for a long time, I would have believed it “was” cheese, not that it simply contained cheese, it’s not even the primary ingredient, it’s number two to skimmed milk powder. And what sort of cheese does it contain Chris? I hear you shouting at the screen. I don’t know because the internet didn’t say and although I’m sure that there is rabbit hole into which I could climb that would tell me, quite honestly I'm "off-piste” enough as it is, I may write further on the world of Dairylea or I may not.
Another question which was posed by the internet about Dairylea was
“is it safe to eat Dairylea when pregnant?”
It never occurred to me that the question would be asked, let alone require an answer. For your continued peace of mind I can inform you that “yes”, it is safe.
The point, yes there is a point, to mentioning Dairylea’s eccentric packaging is that long before actual Frisbees arrived in Barnsley, the nearest thing to the aforementioned plastic wonder toy was the….you've guessed it…..you have guessed it haven't you? Of course, you have, the Dairylea box top. Now, if you are thinking, as you surely must be, that I’ve made a fundamental mistake and the Dairylea packaging provides two Frisbee substitutes, I have to disappoint you, it’s only one and a half.
But Chris, how can you have half a Frisbee? There surely lye’s aeronautical insanity. You can’t obviously, but that is my wholly unscientific estimate of the value of the base in relation to the lid, it simply did not cut the mustard aerodynamically.
The lid was thin and flew through the air like the alien spacecraft in clearly was. The base was distinctly thicker cardboard and it’s deeper profile made it the “flying bedstead” of the semi-cheese packaging avionic world.
So, now that you have a flavour of what was considered exotic in Barnsley in the 1970’s you can only imagine my excitement when one day my dad came home from work with a cigar tube. Yes! The cigar tube, for there was only one in my entire childhood, was the highlight of the year. If I'd received it as a Christmas present I could not have been happier. The cigar tube was far too exotic to take outside for fear that some brute would wrestle it from my grasp and make it there own. I did allow my best friend Keith to have a look at it when he came around to look at the Airfix catalogue with me. He O
oed and Ahh’d appropriately at the object, fully appreciating, as only an eight-year-old can, the value of such a gift.
The cigar tube was gold AND aluminium or possibly some other alloy whose provenance I cannot claim to know. It had a black plastic cap which could be flicked off with some effort and made a satisfying “pop” when removed.
I took the cigar tube everywhere, in the house, it’s immaculate smooth surface being the perfect embodiment of the space age in which we lived.
At this stage you be screaming at the screen again, perhaps something along the lines of, “but Chris, what’s the fucking point of all this bollox?”
The point is this. I took the cigar tube into the environment it was so clearly designed to perform best in, the bath! I spent hours with it, filling it emptying it. Watching in fascination as it partially sank only to bob satisfyingly in the water like a fishing float. Archimedes could not have been any happier than I when my own “eureka” moment arrived and this isn’t even the point of the story.
I learned through careful experiment and analysis of temperature that, if you cooled the tube down and put the stopper in, then sat the tube in the hot bath water, after a short wait the air would expand and the cap would fly off in one direction, the tube would shoot in the other, eat your heart out Archimedes!
An interesting non-fact is that Archimedes did, in fact, die by having his heart "eaten out", by a ravenous squirrel.
All action has an equal and opposite reaction, if only I had enough brain cells to realise, that could have been the story of my introduction to science. I can imagine being interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs or with Jim Al Khalili on The Life Scientific, making them chuckle at my childlike discover of thermos dynamics. But instead of embarking on a cerebral journey to a Nobel prize, I decided the next thing to do with the tube was to stick my willie in it!
Despite the comic scene, the laws of thermos dynamics persisted and as I stuck my tube clad appendage out of the water like some kind of stunted sabre, it started to cool down. So the effect of the expanding air that had provided me with such entertainment now proved to be a trap. The warm air in the tube was now cooling and therefore contracting. Nature was doing its thing by abhorring a vacuum and trying to bring about equilibrium by pulling my tender member into the tube. I confess, I panicked, ‘Dad! Dad!’ I screamed at the top of my eight-year-old lungs. He came rushing into the bathroom to find my thrashing about in the water, apparently in the final act of intercourse with an alien.
He did what any father would do, he laughed until he nearly wet himself, before finally grabbing the tube and, please excuse the expression, pulled it off! That was when the tube made its final “pop!”
My love affair with the tube was over, it spent the rest of its days in “the drawer”, where all things that don’t have a place go.
The End.