Catalogues and what to do with them

The Coopers catalogue and Peter Tinneswood

Beautiful man, Peter Tinneswood. Loved his cricket. Can you be a beautiful man without a love of cricket? Without a doubt. Plenty of cultures just don't have the game in their national agenda. Otherwise, well, you're on dodgy ground.

Among many hilarious books, Tinneswood left behind the Brigadier series. Transparently based on a watered down version of our own lamented (only because he's not dead yet) Grennie. The Brigadier is an ultra old fashioned, chauvinistic, dinosaur of a bloke. Our Grennie is much, much worse.

Tinneswood wrote the Brandon Family books. The BBC, in more ballsy days, filmed these as the “I didn't know you cared” series. The dad, a council groundsman, reads seed catalogues for leisure. They're old-fashioned, a reminder or bygone days, a promise of flowering glory to come from small packets of dry seeds. The books celebrate family, love, food, nature and the countryside of the north of England. I remembered the beauty and comedy of catalogues looking at the Coopers (of Stortford) version. Don't throw it away if you've got one. Find the humour and joy. I uncovered:

P2: Dave is looking forward to Spring, as he has decorating to do and needs to 'spring' into action...

P6: the 'hands free vegetable peeler' sits above a cooking pot equivalent of those anti-chew lampshades dogs have to wear: no more hob spills!!! (Why not just turn the heat to an appropriate setting?)

P6: good page, 6, there's a recurring theme starting. An adopted George Foreman grill, with four holes: the Healthy Home Made Burger Maker.

P7: ceramic knives. Supersharp, just don't crush, prise, bend them or drop, or abuse them (won't work in these parts)...

P9: more recurring theme: the Perfect Pie Maker. George Foreman with pie-shaped holes.

P10: the low fat, high heat griddle pan. Ask BLISS about griddle pans. She isn't a fan.

P16 onwards: now we're cookin' (sorry). There's an anti-fatigue comfort mat, a self-drying mop (see the perpetual motion machine), flip flop things with rejuvenating bristles (clean, exfoliate and massage your feet while you shower), a three-way, multi-function hole punch (so useful! I'm forever punching holes in belts!), a personal internet and password logbook (there's security, write it all down), say goodbye to the menace of moles (or live and let live, maybe?), meerkat garden wobblers (garden wobblers?), there's relief from: stiff and painful knees (no surgery required), dodgy hips (no surgery required), incontinence (well, not the incontinence, but pants with extra absorption 'in the right place', which begs the question: why not just build the pants from the absorbent material?), ladies incontinence (labelled 'only when I laugh...' it goes on, 'or sneeze, or cough, or walk, or wake up'. Guess that covers just about everything right there...like the men's but frilly).

What a catalogue. Kitchenware, homeware, food, growing old, safe burgers and pies without adulterated DNA, a home made mincing machine to eliminate all traces of horse, unwanted pig or cow, a George Foreman grill for every occasion, pie, pasty, pattie, waffle, and any other purpose imaginable, joint saving contraptions (knees and elbows, not lamb and pork), and how to be incontinent but go undetected. All life played out in less than a hundred glossy A5 pages.