Coffee Break Question: Which Type of Vehicle...?
From which type of vehicle are you most likely to hear the Greensleeves tune?
(Scroll down for the answer!)
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An ice-cream van!
Of course. We thought this one was ridiculously easy, but that might just be a reflection of our own gluttonous childhoods.
There doesn’t seem to be any particular historical reason why Greensleeves has become the generic go-to tune for so many of the UK’s ice-cream vans.
Granted, it does seem to be the perfect melody to bring forth a craving for a double cone with quadruple Flakes and extra chocolate sprinkles. We suspect this was preying on the mind of Elizabethan publisher Richard Jones, who first registered ‘A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves’ with the appropriate authorities back in the late 16th Century.
But it’s a simple, widely-known tune, and one that works perfectly in short bursts, especially when broadcast to the neighbourhood through a set of battered old chimes. Other popular van selections include The Teddy Bears Picnic, Boys and Girls Come Out To Play and the theme from Dr Zhivago.
For those for whom the sound of the approaching ice-cream van evokes a particularly wonderful nostalgia, a browse through the website of Microminiatures Ltd will have you weeping with childhood pleasure.
They’re the people who make the actual chimes for ice-cream vans, and can provide you with all the equipment you need to bolt on to your family’s Nissan Qashqai to make it a little less boring – including a huge library of sounds sampled from the original wind-up clockwork chimes of yesteryear.
(Please get the car owner’s permission before starting to undertake a full conversion).
Our bonus question is a little more tricky, so we’ve made it multiple-choice. According to that well-known official legislation The Code of Practice on Noise From Ice-Cream Vans Etc., for how long can a van-owner broadcast a burst of chimes? Is it a) 4 seconds; b) 8 seconds; or c) 12 seconds?
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It’s c) 12 seconds. If you guessed a) then – bad luck – four seconds was actually the maximum up until a decade or so ago, when regulations were relaxed. No chiming after 7pm, however – or within 50 metres of a hospital, or the ice-cream police will be on to you. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Thousands more such questions in the LOGO family of board games on Amazon!
