Hugh Gibbons' references and extra information
PPhunnybone for September 2014
for pharmaceutical physicians, colleagues and friends

You know Placebo and Nocebo.  Well, I’m researching some other significant Effects.  Gelatogenic ones: creating laughter and releasing endogenous opiates which this man in the saloon bar assured me are Good Things, Son, charging only £50 for what he slipped into my Babycham. 

THE GAZEBO EFFECT is an important, oh dear, angle on Erectile Dysfunction.  It’s the mirth from watching grown men, lone or ad hoc team, trying to put up a fabric garden gazebo – even when using an impatient instruction leaflet.  Those with OCD or nautical swear words are a bonus to watch. 

THE PIZZABO EFFECT says: cool by the time of home delivery, all pizzas taste alike.  For greater pleasure, eat the box they come in.  

#EBO EFFECT “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” goes TS Eliot’s Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock.  Were he writing today, Tom would perhaps replace spoons with #s as the new popular pulse.  

PLAICEBO EFFECT is the pleasure at filleting fish perfectly.  No bones to pick with that. 

THE VISIBO EFFECT is a happy boon for us hard of hearing.  Switch on the TV subtitles.  They’re good for laughs in any solemn drama or soap, as many discovered with the hapless Jamaica Inn.  Subtitles like THUD, SOUND OF STRANGULATION, MACAW SCREECHES, MORRIS DANCING MUSIC, SOUND OF GAZEBO COLLAPSING enhance the pleasure as you eat your pizza box while watching. 

THE SPACEBO EFFECT is worth knowing.  It always seems to me that space to give the other person time and silence to take things in is one essential of good writing (and conversation).  Commas, full stops, paragraph breaks and pauses have that effect.   

But here’s another literally inspiring take on space.  It’s the outcome in 2014 of a very real THUD, pause and BANG in October 1943 that surfaced exactly 70 years on, during a metal-detecting day at Tally Ho Farm at Winkfield near Bracknell.  For a big surprise and smile, get out the smelling salts and see the great feel-good story at www.thanksgivingfield.org.   

While creating the Field, I saw a letter in the Guardian from Jackie Bagnall, Director of the Centre for Peace and Global Studies at Sidcot, a Quaker school in Somerset.  She said that the school provides pupils with a period of silence each week, and that for over 300 years this has given them welcome breathing space.  So I asked them to bottle some which we could embed in Thanksgiving Field.  Pupils duly gathered lungfuls and breathed them into a glass jar.  At the opening, we shook the jar and sprayed the air with silence – amid much mirth and high-fives. 

If you’re ever in the vicinity, visit the Field and grab a handful of that breathing space.  If not, join the Happy Landings Club, so I can send you some breathing space on-line to use in home or office.  You can also assign a Giving-thanks Seat – and be allowed to take the day off on the birthday of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.  

It’s, ahem, the Gibbo Effect. (CYMBALS CLASH).