Man Of Few Words

Chapter 9

I feel like I should be getting back to the story of my career, just to give all this some kind of narrative continuity, but it's not important and it never was. I think that was the point I was trying to make, and I think I already made it. Nevertheless I feel compelled to quickly mention that after doing scam letters and various other bits and pieces for a while, I started getting a lot of work writing manuals for things that didn't really need them – basic home appliances and the like. I didn't have the knowhow to do anything as complicated as a computer or even a flatpack furniture unit, but I did a lot of toasters, coffee makers, vacuum cleaners, food processors and even, on one occasion, a range of DVD players. I really regretted taking that DVD player job on. They had way more features than I'd ever imagined possible, and it confused the hell out of me. I'm eternally sorry to anyone who ever bought any model from that particular range. You'd have been better off with one of those manuals that reads like it was written by a Chinese factory worker who does have a Chinese-English dictionary, but hasn't actually ever seen any actual English sentences written down before. The guy who writes stuff like, "Place the disc on the disc then hit the button really must now tray," might not know English, but at least he knows how the machine is supposed to work.

It's really hard to write authoritatively and informatively when your natural instinct would be to write things like, "If that little light is red, then I think that means it's off. Sort of," and "Just keep pressing it 'til you see some numbers on the display." I was always better at informal, conversational, chummy stuff, which is how I progressed to directions on the packaging for food and various other household goods, then ultimately to catchier, more marketing-y kind of stuff for the last 5 years or so.

You might mock my use of the blatant non-word 'marketing-y', but blatant non-words, especially those ending in 'y' have been my bread and butter for some time. Literally, as it happens. In the case of bread, I had the apparently inspired idea to describe a brand of bread rolls as 'roly'. Since then Roly Rolls have made huge gains in market share and are officially the most popular brand of bread products among primary school children in the UK.

As for butter; well, I can't take credit for 'butterly'. Very much my style, but it was before my time. However, when Knobby's Butter needed a tagline for its new Knobby's Kids range, I was on hand to throw down, "Spready for anything!" The launch was a huge success and that self-same gibberish still adorns every Knobby's Kids product on the market.

Yeah, kids' stuff was a bit of a speciality for me for a while. Then marketing departments started to cotton on to the fact that adults also respond well to being talked to (or written to, I guess) as if they're mentally deficient children, and suddenly I was in demand for all kinds of things.

But as I say, none of this is really important. Or ever was.