Home comforts from abroad and past pleasures in the present exert a curiously powerful hold over us.
An honest, law-biding citizen seldom gets the opportunity to witness a criminal mastermind at work, but a couple of years ago, when PPW’s American Express card was cloned in a Dubai shopping mall, I was afforded just such a chance.
The fraud department at my card company informed me they’d be sending details of the last transactions made on my account so I could confirm which, if any, were actually mine. I prepared myself to peek through a window onto complex money laundering schemes or perhaps terrorist funding at work.
When I discovered that my purloined plastic had just been used by an expat in Tehran to order himself some Birds Custard Powder over the Internet I was understandably a little disappointed.
Little comfort
I was also recently afforded the chance to throw a little of my game the way of a rather hot female colleague, which if nothing else will serve to illustrate one of the (many) reasons PPW remains hopelessly single.
PPW: Up to anything tonight?
HFC: Nah, bit of telly … oh, and it’s bath night tonight.
PPW: (looking like a cat in a cream factory) mmmmmmmmm ….. need a hand with your back?
HFC: (smiling politely) er, no thanks, I think I can manage.
PPW: (raising left eyebrow) Need a hand with your front?
HFC: (rolling eyes) uh, if I can manage my back okay why would I need a hand with the front?
PPW: (smirking) Bigger job!
Wingman: (dying of embarrassment) Scented candles? Bubble bath?
PPW: Do they still make Mr Matey?
Ah, Mr Matey. That slug of blue, bubble-making, development-arresting chemicals was as much a feature of my childhood bath nights as urinating in the water. I’ve grown out of both I’m pleased to say, though I suddenly found myself compelled to relive (the hygienic) one.
I went on a quest for my old childhood companion.
It was a short one.
The packaging has changed a little, the brand name is a little more PC, the ingredients probably a little less toxic, but Matey as it’s now called is still being sold. In fact it can be ordered online from that same home-comforts-from-abroad store that shipped the Birds Custard Powder to my own, personal Bane.
And even though I’ve outgrown bubble bath and in spite of the fact that I take showers these days anyway, a bottle of Matey is winging its way to me as I type.
Little comforts
Be it nursery food from home, or nursery pleasures from childhood, little comforts can mean a lot to us. Some time ago I was reminded of the 80’s animated series Around the World with Willy Fog and I was overjoyed to see it was out on DVD. I had to have it.
And there are obviously plenty of people just like me doing just the same things, paying a hefty premium to relive childhood pleasures or to enjoy a little taste of home while abroad. If there weren’t so many of us, there wouldn’t be businesses out there resurrecting the likes of Willy Fog and Mr Matey, or shipping custard powder to Tehran.
This is, of course, totally irrational. These things are unlikely to live up to the effort we put into them and are eminently substitutable. I’m sure Iran has many local delicacies to rival a bowl of stodgy British pudding.
Yet, however irrational, many of us share the drive to do it.
Why?
Bigger comforts
We form pair-bonds with our family and friends driven by the pleasure we get from our relationships with them, and in a similar way we form quasi-pair-bonds with the things that give us pleasure, our hometown, our favourite foods, our favourite places, our favourite experiences, our cars. And I wonder if it may be as much the social side of this that drives us so passionately to seek out these distant and past pleasures, as it is the pleasure we once derived from them.
Chances are you and I could be friends.
Having like-minded, similar people in our lives is more than just a pleasure, it’s part of our survival instinct because we’re stronger together. Talking of and seeking out our particular, signal pleasures reveals who we are to other people.
It’s almost like body language.
It’s a great way of finding people just like us.