Dancing on the Battleship

y name is Sarah. For what it’s worth. Straight up. No messing. I don’t know if I should tell you my name or not. Does it help?

Maybe you will just think of the other Sarahs in your life and it will confuse the issue. Or maybe you don’t know any Sarahs in your life.

Like, there could be a Sarah who lives next door to you who is blonde, but you’ll get misled away from me because I’m a brunette.

Or she may be taller than me. Or smaller. Or, as I said, maybe you don’t know any Sarahs, and so it won’t matter.

So maybe I should shout my name from the rooftops, or maybe I should not. They say there’s a lot in a name, but maybe they’re wrong. Because I don’t think I like being known. To be known is to be owned, possessed, dissected – like something in a Biology lab at school.

I’d rather none of us had any names, if I’m honest. Names are about pride and attention-seeking, power, status.

But anyway I’m not here to discuss all that, as a matter of fact. I’m here to talk about something else.

My hobby.

I like to collect television advertisements.

My quest – and don’t laugh at me using a word like that, because I’m taking this seriously – my quest is to record on videotape a copy of each television advert ever made.

I got my first video recorder in 1983. It was as big as a coffee table and I was in love with it. It sat there saying to me, ‘You want to record the magic? Let’s get started.’ So I fed my first tape into the slot and there was no stopping me. And I‘ve done a good craftsman-like job ever since. Even if I do say so myself.

I’m good at this. Believe me. It’s my life.

And at the last count, I’ve got over forty-one thousand adverts on tape. Each one catalogued and indexed under key words.

Like, do you remember the one with the cricket pitch in the rain, advertising insurance?

Got it.

The one with the sailors dancing on the deck of a battleship, clutching boxes of washing powder?

Yeah, good wasn’t it?

Got it.

And the one with the cat looking at the mice on the moon through the telescope, who decides he needs a wristwatch?

Got it.

Too bloody right I’ve got it – that was ace.

But I’ve got a problem. It keeps me awake at night. What about all those advertisements made before 1983? All those ones from the fifties, sixties and seventies?

When I look at my memory I’ve only got a vague recollection of some of them and it’s killing me that I haven’t got them on tape.

I want them. A record, for life, of what was. But I haven’t got them.

I thought I might do the next best thing and act them out in front of a video camera, but I can’t remember them completely and it wouldn’t be very convincing with just me on the screen, would it? I mean, come on.

Like, if there was an advert for flour set in Wembley Stadium with thousands of football fans, it wouldn’t look very good if I tried to recreate it in my back garden with just me, would it?

Know what I mean?

The next-best thing is never good enough, is it?

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