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A skateboard rolls down a hill. A greying man drives through a Center Parcs. "Honestly," an ad executive says. "Honestly, we'll get an extra two hundred grand out of them just for a montage." He wears tight jeans and a wireless headset. He has a ponytail and an earring. "How much was the last montage? Do you know what a pain in the arse it is to make a montage?" Piano music, sunlight. Cooking smells and lipstick. "It's like a 10-day shoot, minimum. Actually, make it three hundo. We've still got to get a cape made up for the widow." And so Scottish Widows is back, reminding us all of the inexorable march towards death with a series of vivid images of life. The smiling child with teeth larger than his head; the elderly couple dancing together in a hall. A soothing voice asks for your definition of happiness. Happiness, it turns out, is a man lifting weights in his basement; happiness is girls in cagoules spinning deliriously around a carousel. Someone makes some meringues. Life.
But before you get too carried away, here's a widow in a cape, a power-browed spectre of death. Her eyes say, "Hey, are you insured? What if you sever both arms in a machine?" Her cape says, "Seriously, what if you crash face-first into a bollard? How are your family going to buy things?" A twitcher smiles in the brush; a band plays to a jubilant crowd. These people, with their meringues, they are happy. And you know why they are so happy? Because they are insured out their arses. With a £20-a-month policy and enough glassy focus, maybe you could be happy, too.
