As I sit here enjoying another glass of the rubicund relief and rescue I'm trying to think of when I first became aware of the complete rot of advertising.  The credibility gap, I mean, between the thing they pretend to sell you and the thing you end up with.  And a voice speaks in my mind.  It says, 'Swoop.'

I was six, nay, seven, at least still barely formed in the soul according to the Jesuit tradition.  My heart was still a soft mold when on the television, in a space between that kiddie-arts programme fronted by a known paedophile there appeared a brightly painted box containing birdseed.  This product was called Swoop.  An avuncular voice-over reassured us that all that was required was to sprinkle said Swoop across the lawn, whereupon "your garden will be filled with colourful varieties of beautiful birds".  I begged my mother for Swoop. Pleaded.  Cajoled.  Whimpered for the stuff.  Breadcrumbs, she said.  Sunflower seeds.  Peanuts on a length of string.  No, I cried, Swoop Swoop Swoop.

I got my way.  I remember how she slammed the packet down on the kitchen table.  'There's your bloody Swoop.'  I ran out to the garden, sprinkled liberally, returned inside and waited.  After an hour or more, they came.   

Starlings.  Filthy, squabbling, squawking, dirty-feathered grey-black starlings, harbingers of avian diseases, images of poverty, shitting on the lawn, hoovering up the Swoop.  Seventeen of them.  I counted.  Really nothing else got a look in.  Where were the birds of paradise?  The lesser-spotted and the greater-plumed?

With such dark birds gathering is there anyone out of there on this internet who blames me that I like a glass of wine in the evening?  Is it any wonder that I have dark dreams?