Spam

In 1958, when my Father finished a roll of slide film, it'd get bundled off to Kodak for processing packaged in a little canvas bag that came with each roll just for that purpose. After close to an eternity, a little cardboard box would arrive with 36 slides neatly packaged inside. As if by magic, the contents of the little aluminium canister inside the canvas bag had been transformed.

We'd all wait impatiently for darkness so that we could take our spots round the projector to see what wonders he'd captured on this latest roll of film.

Being the eldest, I'd get to turn the lights off. They just went off, none of this lights "down" business then, there was no such thing as a dimmer; we were lucky to have electricity! The projector bulb produced the whitest of white light inside a dusty square on the screen and we made animal shadows with our hands in the slide-less frame until the first slide went in.

The carriage clicked... then this!

SPAM!

Actually we never had the real thing, but occasionally Mum used to open a tin of "Camp Pie" which is the same horrid recipe mix of fat, offal and sawdust that is used in Spam, despite the fact that we kids hated it so much it'd only go down cubed and battered, served in fritters with lashings of tomato sauce. Of course using the term to describe unsolicited advertising hadn't been coined at that particular part of last century so we just called it rubbish. We didn't call it "junk" either, because even if we'd been exposed to that word at the time, (which we hadn't) we'd be chastised for using "Americanisms".

Of course in those days the rubbish bin was exactly that, for rubbish, none of this recycle nonsense (except for softdrink bottles and we'd get threepence for taking it back to the shop if we were lucky enough to find a big one of those!), and usually it was straight into the rubbish bin for all those advertising slides!

I'm not sure how this slide avoided its fate, but it did, and now I've found it again while scanning the rest, so it's got a chance to live a bit longer and spread its message further.

Junk mail: bringing you advertising since 1950-something!