I'm about to take a sip of my Diet Coke as we sit down to eat last night (oh yes, it's thrilling stuff in this household of an evening), when WotN says 'Wait, here is a new kind of ice-cube.' A new kind of ice-cube? It's an ice-cube, for crying out loud - who needs new? But WotN isn't making it up. This is a little plastic thingie containing liquid that you freeze in the usual way, and then after you've used it, you wash the plastic cover and pop it back in the freezer. Advantage? The ice doesn't melt into your drink. Not that I've ever found that to be a worry, but hey, there are other people with other attitudes, so what do I know?
The thing is, I ask WotN, how did you even know about this? I saw it in Sainsbury's, she says, and thought I'd give it a try.
And there's a difference between us. If I'd seen something called 'reusable ice-cube', I'd have looked away immediately, with some suitably dismissive thought. I'm the very opposite of the ad-person's dream. As soon as my brain registers that something comes into the category of advertising, I switch off mentally and am gone. It's a time-saving mechanism on my part. WotN will occasionally ask whether I saw the ad for retractable sweploods, or some such, in today's Radungia. Nope. But it was a full page ad!? No matter. All my eye takes in is: Ad... skip this page.
Thus do I pass over wondrous new goodies until an actual human acquaintance points one out to me and recommends its qualities.