Wanted: Brainspace

Watcha gonna do when you get a snack attack?
Howdya keep away from junk?
Howdya keep em off ya back?

But when it's time to feed your belly
Get off the beaten track
Time to find a new direction
Time to get a snack pack

du du du du du du du

When a snack attack does it to you
You got the facts
Nothin does it to you like a
SNACK PACK!

In case you are thinking to yourself that perhaps I have completely lost it, let me explain. The above is the "jingle" for an advertisement for a kid's chocolate yoghurt called "Snack Pack". This advertisement screened on Australian TV in the 1980s and I still remember every word.

I hesitate to write it down, but you will have to believe me when I say that I can recite the entire Franco Cozzo advertisement (also from the '80s), even with a semi-authentic accent (Footesgray).

This is what we had to memorise in Grade 5:

Mr Kartoffle's a whimsical man
He drinks his beer from a watering can

And for no good reason that I can see
He fills his buckets with China Tea

He parts his hair with a knife and fork
And takes his ducks for a Sunday walk

Says he, "If my wife and I should choose
to wear our stockings outside our shoes

"And eat tobacco instead of jam
And plant tulips in the baby's pram

"That's nobody's business but ours"

I was obviously a diligent student.

Songs, games, irrelevant facts, quotes, stories and images all take up valuable space in our brains. But the important stuff, well, blowed if I know where I put my keys or what my pin number is or whether today is Monday or Wednesday.

But what I can tell you, something that you surely always wanted to know, is that there are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Now, what was it that I was doing, again?