Anyone got 30 million eggs?
One of the best things about January is the return of Creme Eggs. We measure out religious festivals by the consumption of appropriate confectionery: Quality Street at Christmas, eggs at Easter, those fake buttons with hundreds and thousands on that taste like dog chocolate from the pick'n'mix when watching Mel Gibson films at the pictures, Ferrero Rocher at Ambassadors receptions (when held on the thirteenth Wednesday after Pentecost).
But the Creme Egg is different, at least round here. It says something about the esteem that Cadbury's is held in that people don't think it odd sending poets to protest about potential transfer of ownership of one large corporate identity to another, and the Creme Egg is the one people feel for.
It's the one people do this to:
It's the one people refer to first: back when I really wanted to be a music journalist I wrote a piece for now-defunct (aren't they almost all) magazine Flipside, the centrepiece of which was comparing Noddy Holder to a Creme Egg -- you know "from the Midlands", "associated with a religious festival", "covered in silver foil", "deceptively sticky and covered in hairs", that sort of thing.
It's the one that people brought up when I asked people on Twitter what I should blog about here.
The first suggestion was one about Creme Eggs, there were others but they weren't as good. To be honest most people just told me not to mention the snow:
You can't buy that kind of cultural assimilation, or maybe Kraft think they can, which is sort of their point I guess. You also can't buy the kind of conversations and expertise you get on the social web. So to work out how many eggs would fit in an Olympic size swimming pool - my solo calculation went like this:
Volume of an Olympic swimming pool = 2,500 m3 (from Wikipedia, I trust it on this issue).
Volume of a Creme Egg = 5cm. by 3.5 cm = 0.0000875m3 (turning them into boxes, size based on this very in-depth study - PDF)
Which works out at 28,571,428.6 eggs to minimum size pool.
All very well you might think, but in the space of a few minutes I've been informed of the need to find out how much weight a Creme Egg can take: "You'll need to know what compression weight they will take before breaking so you know how deep you can stack them.", a reminder that I'd need "a thorough grounding in Sphere Packing" (from someone I know has a physics degree).
But more than that I had a offer of a swimming pool to test it out in - you can't get that from a reference book. Unfortunately it's not an Olympic size pool, maybe the council will let us use theirs if it ever gets built.
So far so standard defence of the social web as a tool to get things done (even if they're frivolous), but I happen to know that the network I've got on Twitter will do such things. In the last month they've performed a pantomime (which you can vote for an award here), agreed to do a 5K run at night in unsuitable clothing, spent all night at New Year in Digbeth Coach Station, given up a weekend to build a useful website
, and that's just the things they think are fun. They're also attempting to spread their knowledge for free to worthwhile causes (20th Jan is the next time) - and it's all because of the trust built up by doing the silly bits.
Now, is there anyone from a chocolate factory on Twitter that can sort us out with about 30 million eggs?
Older/Newer
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Anyone got 30 million eggs?. TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.birminghampost.net/cgi-bin/mt421/mt-tb.cgi/181700
4 Comments
Leave a comment
Lifestyle authors
Fiona Handscomb - Freelance arts/cultural writer and editor of What's On Stage/Midlands
My postings |
My feed
Jon Bounds - Digital consultant and creator of Birmingham: It's Not Shit
My postings |
My feed
Nikki Aaron - English language teacher uncovering life in Beijing
My postings |
My feed
Brumcast Lite - A taste of the best of Birmingham's music scene by Brumcast creator Little Chris
My postings
| My feed
Sid Langley - Freelance writer and cultural commentator
My postings |
My feed
Charlotte Beeching - Former External Affairs Manager at Marketing Birmingham and currently taking a career break to embark on a round-the-world trip
My postings |
My feed
Hannah Waldram - Critic and writer/editor of www.westmidlandsdance.com, and dancer in her spare time.
My postings |
My feed
Michael Mclean - I love films. I live and work in Birmingham and make my living, managing a cinema.
My postings |
My feed
Latest Birmingham Post News blog
Birmingham Post staff and guest bloggers from the midlands give you their opinions on local and national news.
Latest Birmingham Post Business blog
Birmingham Post staff and guest bloggers from Birmingham and the midlands inform and entertain on all business matters.
Latest Birmingham Post Sport blog
Birmingham Post staff and guest bloggers from Birmingham and the midlands inform and entertain on all sporting matters.
I think this is the first time someone has written about one of my flippant comments ;) Has turned into a great article though :D
I love that this may seem to be about rndom stuff but actually is about really serious topics like Cadbury/Kraft merger and Municipal pools disappearing! So Brummie and relevant!
A great and really rather subtle post. I like it. Nice one.
The tricks you'll get up to, to try to scam some free chocolate...
You can get more eggs in the pool, if you melt them first.