Topic Challenge - Week 3 - Glue

This is the third blog post in my series "Topic Challenge". Each week, my friend Fiona is submitting a topic which I have agreed to cover in my blog. This week, the topic is glue.


I'm now questioning my friendship with Fiona. What am I supposed to do with glue? Pft.

When I was given the topic of glue, I was a little stumped. I am not opinionated on the topic of glue. But, even things to which we are indifferent evoke thoughts and memories. These are the first three that came to my mind:

1. Perkins Paste. Remember that? Damn, that stuff smelt good. Here's a pic to get you all nostalgic:

Can you smell it? I can practically taste it. What I didn't realise until I went searching for this image (or perhaps I've forgotten?) is that kids actually used to eat this stuff. Eat it. You know, a little for the cut out shapes, a little for the tongue. Maybe that's why I feel like I can almost taste it? Non Toxic - a small gift from the heavens.

My clearest memory of using Perkins Paste is, at the age of probably 3 or 4, cutting out little suns off some biscuit packaging and sticking them onto a piece of paper while my mum watched Days of Our Lives. I suspect they were not safety scissors (because kids were allowed to get hurt in the '70s). Good times.


2. Clag. I think it was the early '80s part of my brain that brought Clag to front and centre. This guy had a brush, not just a plastic stick to apply the glue. I remember feeling I'd hit the big time with this gear.

3. Mike Willesee.

I recall, as a very young person, watching TV with my parents. Well, to be fair, they were watching and I was in the room because one TV! Mike Willesee interviewed a guy who'd been sniffing glue and as a result, couldn't do the fly up on his jeans.

Yep, that's what I remember. It's possible that the guy had been sniffing petrol. He may not have been sniffing anything. Perhaps he was smoking joints for breakfast? Or too much acid? It may not have been Mike Willesee on the TV at all. How could I really know? It was a long time ago and I've had a lot of wine since then.

Point is, when someone mentions glue, I see a sorry looking guy on a very old TV with a piece of string connecting his fly to his finger. The soundtrack to this memory is my Dad's classic tsk, which, incidentally, is the soundtrack to most of my childhood. Even friends may be haunted by my Dad's tongue clicking. He still does it, by the way.

So, Fiona, that's it. Glue, short and sweet. I thought I'd get stuck with this one; it was hard to adhere to the rules. But my agreement with Fiona is binding, so thanks for sticking with me.


What's the first thing that comes to your mind in response to "glue"?