"Central heating for kids"

Recently, on what passed for a chilly morning in Southern California, I made some porridge for breakfast.

Felt like there was a small bonfire in my belly for an hour or so later. 

Reminded me of these cosy-yet-eerie commercials for Ready Brek oatmeal from back in the day.

They were eerier still in my memory, because I pictured them in black-and-white (but I guess that's only because we had a black-and-white TV - as did the majority of the British population then, still)

This washed-out, color-leeched commercial resembles my memory version more closely.

Perhaps some of the "eerie" is the faint suggestion of radioactivity - like this one lucky breakfast-protected kid is also somehow the solitary victim of post-nuclear fallout. 

 Ah, they carried them on well into the 1980s, here adding some hip hop breakdancing / bodypopping / moonwalk-glide "hepness" to the mix.  Nicely juxtaposed with one of those gasometers.

I assume this 2020 refix is one of those retro-commercials where they bring back the fondly-remembered template for nostalgic reasons. Here the pitch has been expanded from "Central heating for kids" to "Central heating for everyone"

I should imagine part of the success of the original ad campaign - alongside its appeal to mums, the idea of protecting your child from the elements in your absence, like an invisible blanket of TLC,  or internal cuddle even - part of it must have been because central heating was a relatively recent thing, with many UK home getting it for the first time.  (An alternate pitch could have been Double Glazing for Kids, or Loft Insulation for Kids). 

We never got central heating - our new-built semi-detached house may have been one of the last built in the 1960s that didn't routinely have it as a fixture. Instead, we had a fireplace, which in the dead of winter became something the entire family huddled around. (It had the curious effect of making the rest of the room colder - by contrast). Fueled by coal. As a result, we also had a coal shed round the back of the house. It wasn't big enough, so the whole side bit of the house was covered in a giant mound of coal, delivered annually by a truck from the Coal Board. As the years went by wood from fallen trees supplemented the fuel, gathered in missions often undertaken in inclement weather. Then sawn up, a chore done on wintry days, with much puffing of visible-breath and raw cold hands gripping the tool).

We also had a two-bar electric fire that was stuck bizarrely high up on the wall of the adjoining room, most of the heat from which rose up to the ceiling quickly and uselessly. And there was also a freestanding two-bar electric fire that could be moved around the house where needed - temporary possession of which was fought over jealously. It was around this orange-glowing device that I curled myself  -  after the trauma of dashing from the bathtub across a draughty landing to my bedroom - in an attempt to absorb as much of the warmth emitted as possible.

I'm not sure why we didn't get one of those freestanding, movable oil heaters, like other families had - they seemed to be more effective at warming up a room. Cost of fuel, I suppose.

But back to the original subject - I don't remember ever having a hot breakfast - certainly nothing hearty and insulating like porridge. 

We were shunted out into the world, walking to school no matter the weather - snow, fog, frost, bucketing rain. Clad in shorts too, even in winter, until the age of 14 - at my school anyway. Knees, red and chapped. Toughen them up was presumably the thinking. 

For some reason, children were not given umbrellas in those days. Not something you saw - a kid holding an umbrella. (Some kids had garments with hoods, like a parka - not me though). Many a school morning, I can remember sitting in my desk, dripping, vapour-ripples of steam rising off my drenched uniform.  

Central heating for this kid - fat fucking chance.