Читать книгу The Completely Useless Guide to Christmas - Martin Pullen - Страница 13
ОглавлениеFROM cellulose-based, pressure sensitive adhesive tape, to a two-metre-wide roll of turkey foil: all you need to see you through Christmas…
Sellotape
Apply rubber resin to a cellophane film, change the ‘C’ to ‘S’, wrap it around a cardboard tube and slice it into rolls, and what you have is Sellotape, a ‘cellulose-based, pressure-sensitive adhesive tape’ that has become an essential part of Christmas.
Just like Aspirin, Hoover, Thermos, Escalator, Yo-Yo and many more, Sellotape has become a generic trademark – a brand name that is now the general, known description of the product.
Place Sellotape inside a vacuum, unroll at a rate of 3cm a second, and the sticky tape will emit X-rays strong enough to scan your finger.
With it estimated that every household in the United Kingdom has two rolls of ‘pressure-sensitive adhesive tape’ tucked away in a drawer at any given time, and, with around 66 metres of tape on an average roll, the UK alone owns enough sticky tape to circle the planet at least 85 times; interestingly, by the thickness of a single roll of tape.
Add all of the tape tucked away in the drawers of the rest of the world, and the Earth could be insulated in a layer of sticky-tape so thick, all thoughts of global warming would be a thing of the past.
Blu Tack
If you don’t wish to use a cellulose-based, pressure-sensitive adhesive tape, then there is always ‘reusable putty-like pressure-sensitive adhesive’.
Not quite sticking to the brief, the story tells, in 1970, whilst working for a sealant manufacturing company in the Hampshire town of Waterlooville, laboratory researcher Alan Holloway produced a pliable, semi-elastic sealant. The problem was that it didn’t seal, although it did just about stick.
At first treated as a novelty, glue manufacturer Bostik became involved and – adding the colour blue to the original white so that children wouldn’t mistake it for an edible sweet – they launched Blu Tack.
Now joined by Tack-it, Pritt-Tack, Ticky Tack, Sticky Tack, Tac ’N Stick, White Tack and other tacky rivals, despite it being reusable, there may well be enough new ‘reusable putty-like pressure-sensitive adhesive’ manufactured each year to make a sticky ball the size of a small planet.
Tinsel
Invented in the German town of Nuremberg in 1610, tinsel was originally made of shredded ‘fool’s gold’ silver, with lead added to give it weight. By the early twentieth century the expensive and fragile Christmas tree decoration had been replaced by cheaper, aluminium-based tinsel. Where shredded silver lost its sparkle, the aluminium proved flammable next to the hot Christmas lights.
No more lead poisoning or impromptu indoor firework displays, as tinsel is now made of PVC.
Gold Marker Pen
One gold marker pen contains enough ink to draw a line at least 60 metres long, or write 95 Christmas cards, including their envelopes.
With it estimated that each person in the UK sends, on average, 31 Christmas cards, one marker pen should last for around three
Candles
Whether lit in church for worship, or a Santa Claus table decoration, candles are a must at Christmas.
In the sixteenth century, candles were popularly made of tallow, the smelly fat of a sheep or cow.
Although more expensive, spermaceti – a type of wax found in the head cavities of a sperm whale – was once popular due to its bright-burning flame.
There are many claimants to the crown of the world’s biggest candle. In 1921, Ajello Candles created a memorial candle for Italian opera singer and close friend, Enrico Caruso. Decorated with elaborate carvings and hand-painted in oils, the one-tonne candle stood almost 6 metres high and measured 1.5 metres in circumference at the base.
Lit for one day each year on 25 February, the anniversary of Caruso’s birth, it is estimated the candle will last for 1,800 years.
The truth will be known in 3721.
Wrapping Paper
Around 30 square miles of wrapping paper is thrown away each Christmas in the UK, enough to cover the Channel Island of Guernsey.
Party Poppers
Although official figures are unavailable, scaled up to the size of a space rocket, it’s quite possible the explosive power of a party popper could blast it into orbit.
Batteries
Whether in a camera or the TV remote, a children’s toy or grandpa’s hearing aid, Christmas would be rather flat without batteries.
Based in Zhangbei, China, electric car manufacturer BYD, working with the State Grid Corporation of China, lays claim to the world’s largest battery. Covering more than 10 tennis courts of floor space and with an estimated weight equivalent of around 300 million AAA batteries, in the event of a mains power failure the giant battery can provide enough electricity to supply a community of 12,000 homes for up to an hour.
On a smaller scale, the most unusual battery is the electric eel. With the head acting as a positive pole and the tail as a negative, a 6-metre eel can produce enough electricity to run 12 light bulbs.
Turkey Foil
Christmas turkey calls – not for the usual tin foil – but turkey foil, 2 metres wide and long enough to stretch from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Only once does the turkey foil see a turkey; the remaining roll – too wide for the kitchen drawer – finds a home in the broom cupboard, and you spend the next few months, long after the teeth along the edge of the box have worn away, tearing off squares of foil to wrap the kids’ school lunches.
But tin foil is not tin foil; tin foil is aluminium. It was last made of tin during the Second World War, when aluminium not only became cheaper, but was easier to use and didn’t leave food tasting of metal.
And if you’ve ever wondered how thin aluminium foil is, or why one side is shiny and the other matt, then you really need to get out more.
Christmas TV Listings Guide
Oh, the excitement of turning the crisp pages of the Christmas TV listings guide – a literary plume of no less than 280 pages covering 14 days of ‘The Best of TV, Film and Radio’, from well before Christmas, right through to the New Year – and reading all about your favourite TV soaps, circling everything you plan to watch or record:
…the Only Fools and Horses episode where Del Boy falls through the bar…
Morecambe & Wise…
The Great Escape…
If only you could just sit and watch TV all through Christmas…
