SAVE OUR ARGOS CATALOGUES

WHILE  it is generally accepted that humanity is going to hell in a stolen shopping trolley, sometimes a story comes along that makes the heart sink to new depths of scunnerdom. Yes, Argos is thinking of scrapping its catalogues.
I go away for two weeks’ holiday (lovely, thanks for asking), only to come back to the news that the doorstopper tome might be going the way of the dodo. Sainsbury’s, the owner of Argos, is thinking of doing away with take-home catalogues and replacing them with shiny new computer tablets in all its stores. The plan has already been put into action in a number of locations to test reaction. Well here’s a reaction: we’re not having it, Mr Sainsbury.
That is not the royal “we” either. Shopper Diane Crawford said: “I know elderly people who don’t have a PC to shop online or use apps.” Fellow browser Sheena Hendry asked Argos: “Do you even realise how many hours of peace and quiet that catalogue gives to parents of young children who sit flicking through the toy section?”
Exactly Ms Crawford. You tell ‘em, Ms Hendry. Only a retail philistine would look on catalogues and despair. Far from being dispensable slabs of dead trees, these mega brochures perform vital functions in the lives of many.
Even after all these years I still get a thrill throwing open a weekend paper and having a catalogue tumble out and hit the dog on the napper. The first thing they offer, apart from the special offers, is reassurance. Whatever dreadful, seemingly random and intractable events are happening in the news, catalogues remind us that most problems have solutions if only someone thinks hard enough. Can’t make out the hands on the clock? Buy a talking timepiece. Dog, consciousness recovered, unable to jump in the back of the car any more? Send for a ramp. Want to diddle the local window cleaner out of his livelihood? Snap up a 30ft extendable pole with a brush on the end (just don’t, as I learned from bitter experience and a smashed windscreen, use it on a windy day).
As well as helping us practically, catalogues are vital mind-wipers for those who can’t go jogging, take a yoga class, or otherwise exercise their stresses away. Humans are hard-wired from birth to enjoy looking at pictures, a tradition that goes back to the dawn of time. Indeed, if you visit some ancient caves in France you can still see drawings on the walls of Neanderthals standing round deep fat fryers, waiting for tasty but low fat chips to cook. Or so I hear.
A younger generation of catalogue aficionados may not realise it, but the arrival of the classics, the Littlewoods, the Freemans, used to be a big event in many households. Hot off the press, everyone wanted a look at the book. Sad to say but for some children this was the only reading material in the house.
While we’re talking educational value, never forget that the catalogue was the nearest thing some folk got to sex education and anatomy lessons. Admittedly the pictures on the underwear pages led to some confusion later in life when it was revealed that not all men were shaped like Barbie’s Ken, but no real harm was done. 
It was a different story with the bra models, most of whom wore undergarments so sturdily engineered they probably had a generation of men living in fear of an eye being taken out if they got too close to an embonpoint.
But why are we fretting? Leigh Sparks, professor of retail studies at the University of Stirling, thinks catalogues will survive, albeit they will become slimmer and more specific. It’s not the death of the catalogue, says Prof Sparks, but it could be the death of the “big book”.
Well, all I can say to the professor is that the rot always starts somewhere, and if society allows the Argos catalogue to disappear then it could be Boden and Orvis next. Before you know it, yummie mummies will be at the private school gates in their jammies instead of pastel cigarette pants and cute little cardies, and millions of dogs will have to sleep on the sofa all the time instead of occasionally decamping to their own personalised beds for a bit of a change. In short, anarchy.
The Argos catalogue is essential to the common good, and best of all it is free to everyone. So call off the shredders, Mr Sainsbury.  Put away all visions of millions of happy shoppers swiping and pinching on tablets. We do enough of that as it is. The novelty is wearing off.  As rising book sales show, print is king again. 
The campaign to save the good book starts here. First job: get hands on some placards. Wonder if Argos stocks them …

THANK HEAVENS FOR SCOTTISH WEATHER

ONE thing confirmed by being on holiday in central Europe, where the daytime temperature soared above 38 most days, was that most Scots cannot do hot. Polar bears in the Gobi desert would fare as well.
We moan about our washout summers and dreich winters, but watching the pictures from the Caribbean and the US we should think ourselves blessed not to live anywhere with newsworthy weather. Nature too often does its worst on those who have the least, and TV news crews, falling over themselves to show the initial dramatic pictures, rarely return to see the painfully slow recovery.
Al Gore, in his documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, remains in no doubt that extreme weather is the result of global warming. “Every night on the evening news is like a nature trek through the Book of Revelations,” he says. Curiously, news reports now seem to um and aw over what or who to blame, something they would not have done until recently. Looks like all that  hot air from a climate change denying US president is having an effect. 

WHAT ALL THE YOUNG DUDES SHOULD WEAR

HOW sweet were those pictures of Prince George’s first day at school? Leaving aside the £18,000 a year fees, the chi-chi London location, the teacher curtseying, the security men, and the £675 jacked dad was wearing, it could have been any four-year-old rocking up to start his school career.
Good luck to George, and all the other youngsters in England and Wales who have taken a big step along the yellow Stickle Brick road of education this week. Scots starters are way ahead of them, of course, having begun their careers at the whiteboard face last month. Now to be found hanging out around the back of the electric bike sheds, they are like, SOOO bored with all those first day nerves now.  Get over it, dude.
George did look rather nervous, perhaps because in starting school he is now part of an increasingly heated debate on the best school uniform for the modern age. Ban skirts, as one school in England has controversially decreed, or let boys and girls wear whatever they want? Solution: take the brave (heart) decision and let everyone wear kilts.