Lovely little curly things

You know those toothpaste ads they used to screen when we were kids? There'd be a smiling lady with perfect teeth, and she'd layer fresh toothpaste from a tube onto a toothbrush. There would be a close up on the toothbrush, and you'd see the toothpaste go on in a perfect flow, ending with a lovely little curl on the end. At this point a 'ping' noise might come from the television or maybe little animated stars, but that doesn't matter, because what matters is the lovely little curl at the end! I used to practice hard with the toothpaste tube to try to get that curl at the end of my own toothbrush - I might have gone through the better half of a toothpaste tube to actually try to get it to happen. It's actually really hard! How did they actually get the curl at the end in those ads? We're talking the '80s, people. This is not the time of advanced CGI and movie special effects so real you can eat them: this is more the time of dodgy puppets with people's hands up their bums talking smack. Do they hire trained ninjas who have been practising the ancient art of paste-fu in Shaolin Temple for decades to get that little Zen moment of curly perfection? Are there some people who just have the curly knack? I DON'T KNOW! By the way, sorry mum and dad for all those lost toothpaste tubes.

Anyway. Things with a lovely little curl at the end of them. Do you know, there's a lot of these in nature, if you look hard enough? For instance, meringues. All the best meringues end with a curve, though they don't typically also make a 'pinging' noise or have animated stars, but you can't have everything. Ice-cream sometimes has too, though the curly bit doesn't usually last because it melts away in the sun just like all beauty must fade away to nothingness eventually and what's the pointy of it all?

And do you know what else ends with a little curl? Chook poo! If the chook does it well (and not all chooks, I have found, are trained ninjas practising the ancient art of poo-fu in Shaolin Temple for decades to get that little Zen moment of curly perfection) then it will taper with a delicate little curl, the nicest you could wish for. How do they do that?

Of course, not all these things are like the other. I wouldn't recommend cleaning your teeth with meringues or ice-cream, for instance, no matter how fun that might seem at the time. I wouldn't recommend doing it with chook poo, either. I know how disappointed you all will be.

I think the basic point I'm making is that things that end with a lovely little curl at the end are lovely THE END.

We've come a long way in the space of this short blog post. A journey. It's been a bonding experience. A moving thing. In fact, I think I want to do a movement now...