dO ITT yurr sEllf

Tighten your fuckin' belts people. I have. I'm even using stock photography now, see.

Actually, no, that's a lie. Times aren't hard at all. I live in the country, which is where all the people who raped the banks in the first place scarpered off to in their Range Rover Sports. Everyone's minted in the country. Whilst us plebs get booted out of our homes by (probably) Polish bailiffs, the nouveau riche eat organic mignons in rural gastropubs bought with the change left over from their daughter's horse. (Or something like that, anyway. Not too sure about the bailiffs...) Any how, the point is life's still pretty much wholesome and healthy in the country. Especially this time of year when all the (moaning, miserly, fucking) farmers are selling their produce. Which so thus hence, of course, brings us to my picture of the little chalkboard sign.

The hand written chalkboard sign is a perennial feature of rural life and commerce. It's also the oldest and most authentic kind advertising there is. And whilst it effectively breaks all the rules by allowing the client to do their own marketing, it always succeeds because of its innate, inescapable honesty. It doesn't even matter what you write on it because it's very existence is so quintessentially charming, someone somewhere (in a Range Rover Sport) will always think "Oh, how lovely" even if Farmer Giles has scrawled "Fucked By Rats" on it, and is now sat weeping in a hayloft with an empty bottle of Bells and a loaded shotgun. No, you can advertise anything with a chalkboard - pies, potatoes, "Pony carrots", organic apples, logs, manure, heeler pups(!), (the ominous sounding) "Duck Eggs - 1Mile" and (my personal favourite) "Butchery Tearooms". You can even get a brand message in there if you want: there's a farmshop near my parents with a roadside sandwich board that has a list of fresh produce on one side, and a daily Bible reference (eg. "Matthew, 7:12") on the other. (The same place once wrote "I'm A Celery... Get Me Out Of Here!" to conincide with the TV show too. Now that's genius.)

Maybe during the financial shitstorm we should just give our clients a chalkboard and ask them to do some DIY marketing? Don't worry, we'd all still get paid though cos it was our cute idea in the first place, right?