Burping the bubble...

"Every bubble's passed it’s FIZZical!" shouted the Sergeant Bilko-voiced Head Bubble in the cartoon TV ad for that great knobbly clear bottled orangeade. It was my drink of choice in the early 60s and early 70s - well apart from cider, beer, Voddy and Lime, and sweet sherry obviously. The idea of devouring an entire army of bubbles and then burping out their remains appealed to my slightly French (poo poo, fart fart, pee pee) sense of humour back then - BUUUUURRRPPPP! It still does now that I think about it. Belching is such an innocent plaisur mes amis.

I remember you could get short dumpy bottles of Corona from the
milkman with foil ring-pull lids and sometimes, if you were lucky, 

you might find a random vending machine, dimly illuminated and
often flashing, in the strangest of places. Put your shilling into the
slot, push in the silver-lever tray thing and pray. Would it? Wouldn’t it? 

The anticipation was frightening, but when you heard that clunk, dump,
thump, it was all well worth it but you never could tell when those 

machines were empty and even the return button sometimes didn’t 

work. Merde, merde, merde, merde! I’m going to beat you until you 

give me back my shilling you thieving blinking vendor of empty promises! 

And then there was the pop man. I could hear those pop crates
rattling from a mile away like an icecream van high on fizzy carbon 

(which we now know it was and was holing up the atmosphere like 

a massive burp). The clash and thump of a crate being delivered to
somebody else’s house was so exciting. God knows why? All I had

was my shilling and my dithery-do about which flavour to choose. 

The delivery men wore white or light brown coats I seem to 

remember, like pretend scientists selling soap powder on TV or 

woodwork teachers - and weren’t those delivery lorries generally 

orange?

It was the fizziest, zizziest, tizziest pop from the bubbliest of 

bottles, the most deliciouzly flavourzy with the beztezt of very 

zimple labelz. I loved them all, Orange, Lime, Lemon, Cherry,

even Dandelion and Burdock, but not Cream Soda, to me that 

was just yuuuurrk! Did they do a Cola? I can’t remember, 

I’m not sure they did - that’s odd.

These days of course if you mention Corona youngsters think
beer (if you can call it a beer, it’s probably less alcoholic than 

the Corona Shandy I loved to drink) and now they’ve named 

a virus after it (I wonder how many flavours that comes in? 

Zillions probably as it keeps mutating). For me though, 

Corona will always mean the taste of a warm summer’s 

evening full of birdsong and buzzing, a sparkling dimpled 

bottle and a fizzy drink so full of sugar and flavour that I’m 

surprised all of us kids weren’t flabby blimps - but we weren’t.

Ah, nostalgia - did you notice it kicking in, isn’t it wonderful? 
It doesn’t mean it wasn’t better back then though, pop certainly
was. Bloody sugar tax my arse - and while we are on it get those
lardy kids off their phones because let’s not forget "Every bubble's
passed it’s FIZZical!".

Right, I'm off to climb a tree. All in who wants to play off ground tig!