Maybe ....
.... they smoke in their cars and thus need the little tree freshener?
Youtube Video "See Naples and die" the saying goes. After visiting the city recently, I can believe it. Hang around there long enough and you’ll be dead. The likely causes of your imminent death in Naples are many: you might be run over by a motor scooter, stumble into a pothole in the broken pavements, get hit by falling …
Don't get me started on those who eat citrus fruit in the office or marinate themselves in perfume.
I, for one, would welcome the use of a lighter when someone decides to follow the ads and empty half a can of Axe deo on their armpits. Those ads should have never been broadcast, ugh.
100-odd years ago in London it would have been matches and bootlaces, another unlikely combination.
You see varaitions all over - the purpose of the goods is to be legit to approach strangers when you can either 1) sell them an overpriced cheap item 2) beg for money in order to get rid of you 3) hold them still and distract them whilst your mate picks their pocket. Streetside shoe polishing is the same deal.
The Big Issue is better as it has a decent margin but also prohibits vendors from selling tat or begging, and has an backup infrastructure to help move people on (hopefully)
I know a guy who was pulled over by the police for a breath test. Realising that he had no mints he quickly eat the little tree "air freshener". How he managed that I don't know but even though he'd drunk several pints he passed the test!
In Milan some years ago the police sealed off all the main roads just before the afternoon commute. The whole place was gridlocked. The reason? It was a rehearsal for a summit conference (G8?) the following day.
Unfortunately, the breathaliser isn't especially interested in the smell but rather the alcohol content. The design is such that it disregards the first part of the blow and does its work on the last gasp. The only purpose the mints serve is to try and disguise the smell from the copper. The machine cares not.
It is possible to drink several pints and stay under, but it depends entirely on the metabolism of the subject, their weight and other body factors, the strength and type of drink, time elapsed since drinking, how long it took for the drinks to be drunk etc etc.
Which is a long winded way of saying that the tree just served to make him feel queasier than he already was!
The guy you know was just repeating a humorous (but false) story. I'm sure it got a good laugh at the pub, but as snopes.com points out, it doesn't work.
The big brick and mortar retailers generally do send you vouchers for things that you want - or more accurately things that you are more likely to buy based on your shopping habits. They can be disturbingly accurate in their predictions - so accurate that they have to toss in unrelated vouchers to mix things up a bit.
Online retailers are amateurs in comparison.
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@armyknife it is certainly the case that doorstep sellers in the UK have the same old collections of stuff. You even see the same weird items (car window escape hammer and seat belt cutter?, 'amazing' super scissors which can cut 2p coins [i.e. bog standard angled blade serrated steel sheers]).
My guess is that these people are at the bottom of various pyramids, or at any rate, simply selling anything they think they can sell which makes them a reasonable margin - it's just two steps up from begging (the next step is washing windscreens at traffic lights) and I think you are correct that the principle reason for the weird item choice is poverty.
Real Pig product? How must sawdust/rusk do you think are in the average Roadside burger van saussage?
Now if the bangers were the ones from my local butcher that are made with 'Hogs Back Bitter' or proper Lincolshire Bangers then fine but the average fast food outlet serves crap IMHO.
http://www.alfturner.com/about-us/
http://www.alfturner.com/products/hair-of-the-hog-sausages/
Those will be on the barbie later. Drinks? Surrey Nirvana and T.E.A naturally.
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I think you're actually both right, it depends on what you seek to express.
Alastair's interpretation is specific locations in a city that are worth seeing. Yours is about anything worth seeing, not necessarily just locations (for instance, the early morning view across a valley when the fog hasn't quite burned off, or the wildlife in a park/nightclub :) ).
Yes, I read that. Apparently, the volcano was either erupting or constantly puffing out smoke for millennia right up until 1944, when the last eruption collapsed the interior. This means it has not been able to let off er... steam for 66 years and may be bottling something up pretty big, and it's 50-or-so year blast cycle is overdue now. We went for a walk around the crater.
So......
This means [Vesuvius] has not been able to let off er... steam for 66 years and may be bottling something up pretty big, and it's 50-or-so year blast cycle is overdue now.
And therefore...
We went for a walk around the crater.
Well, all I can say is, you're braver than I am !
Hmm, so you didn't like Naples? If you'd visited Herculaneum you'd realise that modern Napoli is just an endlessly repatched antique city, with the new merging imperceptibly with the old. Notice how many of the roads are constructed from the same stone squares as the 2000 year old ones! You also have to gawp in amazement at the autostrada on stilts that lurks high above the tower blocks, but don't gawp too long as you may find yourself run down by a funeral carriage that seems to be about 300 years too late for the funeral. If you want to feel truly alive, try plunging into the traffic on a nippy motorbike. Oh, did you also notice that it's still possible to buy a real pizza there? A circle of dough with just the minimum of topping to enrapture your mouth.
Naples always makes me go wow! Visiting Naples is like being in a pacy thriller.
Pizza is just a hot, open-faced sandwich. It has existed as long as humans have been baking bread in stone/clay ovens. People who think it originated in Naples are completely deluded.
THAT said, Naples has been doing a good job of separating fools from their money since roughly 1945. Awful, awful place. Worse than San Francisco, even. And that's hard.
Yes, we visited Herculaneum. Much of the ancient town is still under slums. However, it has not been possible to acquire the slums with a view to widening the archaeological site and move the unfortunate residents into better accommodation because, according to our Italian guide, intransigence on the part of local politicians in the pockets of criminal gangs. How terribly exciting, I must say.
I think they are holding out for more cash from the charity that supports the dig: the Packard Foundation, set up by David you know who.
I must admit that Amsterdam doesn't really float my boat, if you pardon the pun, but that may be because I'm not into drugs, and as red light districts are a bit yawn as well IMHO I guess that removes its main attractions. Sure, there is some interesting stuff moored in harbours but once you've seen that it's pretty much downhill from there.
My next "places to visit for a week or so" are Paris and Florence - both have stunning musea for which a week is barely enough to scratch the surface. It's also not hard work to get good food in there either (I'm personally rather partial to especially real Italian cuisine), and you haven't lived unless you have tried to drive across Place d'Étoile (I never really subscribed to calling it Place Charles de Gaulle) in a rental car with full insurance :).
And when I was there the mafia run rubbish collection group had gone on strike for quite a while, the rubbish was strewn high at the end of streets. It was a hot week, and it stank.
But I enjoyed the visit to Ercolano (Herculaneum)! Just not the train journey, packed full of kids selling shoes etc and assorted poor people.
It makes you thankful for what you've got though, of course.
"Normality is an online retailer who thanks me for my recent purchase of ink cartridges and asks me if I’d like to buy a bicycle."
No, not quite.
Normality is the Online retailer who thanks me for my recent purchase of ink cartridges and asks me if I’d like to buy ink cartridges.
Damn Dabbsy, I've lived most of my life in Naples (I managed to escape some time ago, luckily enough) and your article was a frighteningly accurate depiction of it. Just amplify your thoughts on it a hundred times and you'll have an idea of what it means to live there - I remember waiting 50 minutes every evening for a bus to pass only to find it filled to the brim with people. You'd have to squeeze yourself in, only to end up squished against a window for the rest of the trip.
Every time I go back, it never ceases to amaze me how the place manages to get worse every year that passes. The problem mainly lies in its inhabitants - the majority only cares about their own business and won't think twice on screwing you over if there's something to be gained from it. The political class is even worse and they just focus on how much money they'll be able to steal/stash away/receive from "respectable businessmen" before their mandates end. There are still good people there, but they're getting rarer and rarer.
I like quoting one of the best theatrical actors Italy had in the last century or so, Eduardo De Filippo - he was famously heard saying this to a group of young actors that asked him advice... "If you want to do something good with your life, run away from Naples"