I opened my presents this morning and was delighted to find some socks amongst the haul. I’ve mentioned here recently that socks have been transformed from the unwelcome stocking filler of childhood to pure X-mas gold. If it wasn’t for getting socks at Christmas, I don’t know what I’d do… Buy some maybe. But I don’t ever want that dark day to come. As soon as you start buying your own socks you’re admitting to a degree of responsibility that will only lead to darker things. Paying bills. Tax. All that.
The socks I received are from Marks And Spencer’s, are black, and on first inspection suitably unremarkable and functional. But when you take them out of the package, you notice that they’ve got the word ‘Snog-arama’ written on them at the top in large, red, psychedelic letters.
They come in a package that says ‘Socks – To make you snigger.’
Humorous socks are nothing new, but I’m not sure if I get these. First, who would laugh at the word Snogarama? It’s not an actual word, naturally, and so you have to assume that the snigger factor comes from the ‘snog’ part – which means to kiss someone. I don’t know if anyone has found that word funny since Kenneth Conner in about 1963.
Secondly, and I know you’re ahead of me on this, but I don’t understand the ‘-arama’ bit. Is it a Latin suffix? I don’t know what it means, but I know it’s not really applicable to snogging. Does ‘arama’ mean ‘all’. Like, ‘panorama’ might mean pan-all – so you see the whole… I don’t know.
So I was ruining my Christmas trying to think why Marks And Spencer’s thought it might make someone snigger to write ‘Snogarama’ on their socks when it struck me that all three pairs of socks in the pack might not be the same, and perhaps the others have different, or more explicable, sniggersome messages embroidered into the cotton.
They did! I am like Sherlock Holmes. The next pair were slightly more risqué, having the word ‘Boobalicious’ written in the same psychedelic lettering, this time orange. This is quite rude because it refers to breasts. This has a good chance of making someone snigger. If they were male and were somehow looking at your shoeless feet. Or is the message designed to make the wearer snigger? They would probably only manage to do that once, when the socks were first unwrapped. If you laughed at the word ‘Boobalicious’ any more than once then you would be Sid James. If you laughed at that word every time you put the socks on, you’d be some mad combination of all the Carry On team and would probably explode if you tried to function in the 21st Century, when there’s every chance you might see a lady in a magazine wearing a skimpy outfit advertising Wonderbras. That’s a truism, the Carry On team wouldn’t last five seconds in 2005. The world is too full-on for them now. Kenneth Conner, for one, would slap the back of his neck so hard and repeatedly that it would break. If he didn’t strangle himself by letting heat out of his collar to too frantically first.
So I moved onto the third pair of socks, which were decorated with the words, this time purple, ‘Shagtastic’. Now, I don’t mean to sully this Blog with unwholesome language, but I presume we are all ‘Men of the World’ and have come across language of this nature in the past. I think this has gone past the realm of simple sniggers into the realm of unfortunate poor taste.
So in a collection of ‘socks to make you snigger’ it seems Marks And Spencer have met their criteria only once, with the word ‘Boobalicious’. The other two words are either nonsensical in the case of ‘Snogarama’ or deeply offensive in the example cautiously given above.
I would suggest that next Christmas Marks And Spencer should invent new ranges of novelty socks if they wish to keep these words, and socks, in circulation. They could have a ‘Socks to make you try and remember some Latin suffixes’ range and then put the Snogarama ones in there. They could also have words like ‘winkatootoo’ and ‘bumagogo’ in the same pack.
Then they could have a ‘Socks to cause deep offence’ range where they could put the aforementioned socks and some others.
I suppose the mistake could have been made because Marks And Spenser are, and this isn’t racist, a Jewish company, and Jewish people don’t celebrate Christmas so perhaps there’s a simple misunderstanding as to what people generally snigger at during Yuletide. I think I’ll write them a polite letter.
A very Merry Christmas to you all.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »