For September 2005, Harrods “the worlds most famous department store” is selling limited edition HP Sauce bottles as part of their ‘Truly British‘ campaign.

Fashion designer Paul Smith has designed a multi-stripe pattern label in various shades of brown exclusively for this promotion.

This limited edition HP Sauce bottle is a one of design with only 1899 made. 1899 commemorates the year HP Sauce went into production.

Each bottle is packaged in a quality satin lined box of matching colour, complete with it’s own certificate of authenticity stating its production number out of 1899.

At the time of this writing, demand for this item is quite high and is listed in quantity on eBay. The bottles listed are numbering in the high 1700’s/1899 so one can only presume Harrods has already sold out.

I’ll post a more thorough write-up once mine arrives in the mail.

Yesterday, www.brownsauce.org received a donation from Jamie in the form of a used old style HP Sauce bottle. Thanks Jamie! This adds one more item to the small but growing number of artifacts being collected for the upcoming release of the “HP Sauce museum” section.

The bottle (pictured) is a glass 200 ml bottle still half filled with HP Sauce! It features a classic design label showing a zoomed out view of the British House of Parliament. Also on the front of the label, the Queen’s royal warrant is displayed prominently just above the “HP”. Near the bottom of the label, the slogan reads (repeated in french):

While on the side of the label:

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a bottle labeled like this, and the french would indicate this particular bottle was Canadian issue.

What’s particularly interesting is I’ve not yet been able to pinpoint the age of this bottle. I recall the label with some clarity, but HP Foods has since changed the label to the one we’re now familiar with long before I became interested in HP Sauce history. So far I’ve heard dates ranging anywhere from the mid 1990’s to the 1970’s, and those estimates could very well be right. Until recently, HP Foods rarely changed their labels. My guesstimate is, it’s at least 5 years old. Popping the cap and giving it a quick sniff didn’t reveal much however - it smells like HP Sauce. This stuff DOES keep indefinitely doesn’t it! lol

Update: After liberating this bottle from his in-laws pantry, I sent Jamie home with a new unopened bottle of original HP Sauce (squirty) to replace the one he had taken. That evening over dinner he told his in-laws about it:

Jamie: “Did you guys know you had a half full bottle of HP Sauce in the pantry?” In-Laws: “We had a half full bottle of HP Sauce in the pantry?” Jamie: “Yeah, it was about half full, and it had a different label than the current ones. I took it and gave it to a guy at work who collects them.” In-laws: “There’s someone at work who collects HP?????” Jamie: “Don’t worry, he replaced it with a new bottle. (continues eating)” In-laws: “Okaaaaay?!”

LOL

I’ve also updated Adham’s rotating towel picture with the new “old” bottle. Classic!

This past weekend I spotted an advert for “Canada’s Longest Yard Sale” in the local paper. The ad featured a little map that outlined a route around the east side of the city which totalled 250 kms in length. As it happened however, this past weekend was the same weekend my wife had picked for her own garage sale, combined with her mother and aunt so a family day out garage sale’ing was out of the question. Luckily, my father-in-law - being the obliging sort that he is, agreed to do some ‘garaging’ with my son and I in the morning. For those who don’t know what garage sale’ing is like with a 5 1/2 year old, it goes like this. You plan for 8am, leave by 9am, get roped into brekkie at McDonalds and actually START the garage sale run around 10:00am. That’s LONG after the Hutterites came and went at our own garage sale. I believe I was only just getting out of bed when the large van load of Hutterite women were deposited on our lawn, somewhere around 7:30 am.

Anyhoo, by the time we were finished at McDonalds it was only about an hour and a half before we were to bring lunch home. Clearly not nearly enough time to be driving around outside city limits poking at garage sales. Instead we stayed at our end of the city, catching any garage sale which had a sign posted.

At one such sale, we pulled up where I spotted a rabbit hopping around someones front yard. I told my son about it, and he promptly ran over to it while I caught the rabbits life history from its owner. One minute I’m sitting in the car, the next minute I’m being educated on the wonders of potty training rabbits - of which this one was now a very rickety 9 years. Interesting how stopping at the side of the road outside someones house can change ones day isn’t it!

Fast-forward to 3:00pm

We’ve finally made it outside the city, hoping to catch a few garage sales before they close up for the day. By now all one can really expect to find at this time of day are the dregs left over by hundreds of others who’ve past through in the last few hours.

We stop for an ice cream (one of which lands in my sons lap) and a run around the park (to dry off). Now it’s time to catch a couple antique shops, then head home. My son has been looking for an old toaster ever since he saw “The Brave Little Toaster” movie. So far we’ve yet to find one….

At the last antique shop, we walk in and marvel at all the old items for sale. They had everything from coke & pepsi bottles, to antique toys to furnature etc etc. We all browse for about a half hour when I went up to the man at the counter - knowing full well how it may turn out as my last encounter with that man at the flea market (a few blogs back).

Me: “Excuse me, do you ever come across any HP Sauce items?” Dealer: “Pardon me?” Me: “Old HP Sauce bottles, adverts & such.” Dealer: “Why are you looking for old HP Sauce things?” <—What is with this ’standard’ response?? Me: “I collect them.” He doesn’t need to know any more than this at this point Dealer: gets out of his chair and walks over to an area which I’d only finished browsing through. Dealer: “Here you go.” He passes a tiny clear glass bottle with ‘H.P. Sauce’ etched in the glass Me: shocked look on my face Dealer: “You didn’t think I had any did you?”

It turns out, that several years ago when the city’s new ultra high tech virology lab was being built, this guy had pestered some of the guards to let him on the construction site so he could rummage around in the dirt. Apparently they refused him entrance, so he went back a couple nights later and under the cover of darkness he snuck in and collected a couple hundred “items”. My little bottle being one of them. As it turns out, the buildings foundation was poured the very next day.

The bottle itself is clear glass and measures only 9 centimeters in height and 2 1/2 centimeters wide. The dealer tells me it dates from sometime in the 1910’s.

Once I’ve done some additional research, I intend on photographing this, and my other larger bottle which I’ll place in the history section one complete.

The other day, my son and I went for a walk to the local 7-11 as it was a hot day and I’d promised him a slurpee earlier that morning. Once there, he immediately went for the small cup and filled it right to the brim (Pepsi). His eyes then lit up as he spotted the open box of straws, containing every colour of slurpee straws currently available. I brought the box down to him so he could make his pick and after a quick scan, he picked a green straw. I poured my own Pepsi slurpee and motioning to the box I asked him “So which colour straw should I pick?”. He thought about it for moment and said “Yellow!”. “How about pink?” I said. “Pink is for girls!” he said assertively. A teenage girl near us who was also pouring a slurpee, looked and snickered at us. “Who told you pink is for girls?” I said. “I just know.” he said. He’s 5 1/2 years old and like everything else, he somehow managed to pick this up when we weren’t looking. With that, I picked up 2 pink slurpee straws and put them in my slurpee and we walked up to the counter. There, there were 6 other teenage girls at the counter - all of whom had slurpees, each with a pink slurpee straw. I then looked behind me to the girl who snickered at us by the slurpee machine - she had a green straw…. How very interesting.

For the record, for many years now I’ve always put 2 pink slurpee straws in my slurpees. I’m not sure how or why , but at this point I figure it’s just bad karma if I were to stop now!

The other night, my wife made a huge batch of shepherds pie, and out went another plastic HP Sauce bottle into the recycling bin!

Last week I discovered that Kraftwerk had released their 2004 tour on a live 4 LP box set while I was browsing for used LPs at a local used music store. I reached for the box set and then discovered the $62.95 price tag on it. I love Kraftwerk, but $62.95 was too much…wasn’t it? I considered it but then put it back on the shelf, only to have a couple come into the store seconds later and spot it on the wall. The girl reached for it and as she held it in her hands I instantly regretted my decision to put it back. To my relief she sighed and said to her boyfriend “I wish I still had a turntable.” - and placed the album back on the shelf. I figured, that’d probably be a common response and with hesitation - I left the store in order to give myself a day or two to think about it.

The next day, I’m back at the used music store. Sure enough, it was still there. Sure I had made the right decision, I picked up the box set and walked straight across the aisle and placed it down on the counter. To my right, a man in his 20’s was sorting out some business with someone behind the counter. The man turned and looked at me. He had a big grin on his face and he was nodding - knowingly likes. Not sure why he was doing this, I motioned at the box set and said “Awesome stuff…can’t beat it!”. He was still grinning at me.

Just then, a man came to the till to ring up the sale. As he processed the sale, the man beside me slid over a CD package over to me and said “If you like them…you’ll like us!”. I picked up the CD and flipped it over in my hand and said “your band is all electronic is it?”. Still grinning and nodding he said “we’re…..influenced by them.” “Yeah whatever” I thought and put down the CD and slid it back to him. What was with the grinning & nodding anyway? It was starting to freak me out. By that time, the man ringing up my purchase had placed the box set into a bag. Another employee came over and opened up the bag to have a look inside. Spotting what I was buying, he says to me “Good for you!!”. LOL “Good for you”?? I’m being congratulated for buying Kraftwerk? I look over, and sure enough mr grinning & nodding is still…..grinning…and nodding. “Thanks” I said “I can hardly wait for the live DVD as well!”. “You’re not the only one!” said the employee. Am I in the right shop? Afterall, this is the place that always plays hideous classic rock every time I go there. I’ve always had a wee tinge of embarrasment buying my usual favourites there…now they’ve rolled out the red carpet! Weird.

I won’t soon forget buying this album, that’s for sure. And with Kraftwerk being what they are - it was worth every penny.