The Parable Of The Fuzzy Dice
How our artifacts say so much about us
In 1973 my family and I arrived in Britain. Though my parents were British, I’d spent most of my life up to that point elsewhere, almost exclusively in what were then called third-world countries that nevertheless had the great benefits of warmth and sunshine. Aside from the perpetually dreary gloomy British weather, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the Britain of that time and the other places I’d lived. Intermittent electricity, garbage strewing the streets, and a general sense of hopelessness: all these were very familiar to someone coming from Mombasa or what was then the sand-strewn wastes of Arabia.
The most notable thing to me, however, were fuzzy dice.
Back in the mid-seventies fuzzy dice were the ne plus ultra of automotive accessories for a certain type of young man: modest IQ, inadequate education, and doomed forever to be either unemployed or stuck in a dead-end low-skilled manual job. These young men would save or steal enough to buy a used Ford and then add things to it in the belief that this would make their vehicle (and by extension therefore themselves) more appealing to the teenage girls of their socio-economic bracket.
Racing stripes were hand-painted across bonnet (hood), roof, and boot (trunk). Holes were punched in…
