Contemplate the smaller things

It is a sad statement of my present predicament that I can get genuinely excited the marketing of a new toilet cleanser by Harpic. I felt a real surge of enthusiasm as I plodded my weary way towards the fresh bread section of Tesco after I had dropped off Toni at work. This ended a spirited ‘conversation’ about the relative badness of our respective countries in their colonial days which had lasted from the bottom of Wentloog Road to the drop off point. I’m not sure what such ill defined discussions do to Toni, but I find myself in need of a mind numbing swim to rid my head of slavers, conquistadores, armies of occupation, defunct treaties, and mind numbing injustices!

You can see why the vision of a newly designed bottle of toilet fluid can have an ameliorating affect. I have always found shopping to be a wonderfully fulfilling experience. Obviously I’m not putting shopping on the same level as that memorable performance of Beethoven’s seventh symphony played in the Colston Hall in Bristol by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart, but it’s well in the frame of satisfying experiences.

I wonder how you would define a ‘satisfying experience’. How does it differ from a good experience or a fun experience or a profound experience?

Just consider, as I often do, the various types of shopping.

1. Shopping Direct: a very slovenly form of shopping where a person has already decided what is needed and goes out and gets just the item.
2. Shopping Educational: otherwise known as the ‘informed meander’ where the shopper visually grazes the commodities which are not part of the shopper’s usual repertoire.
3. Shopping Serendipitous where an unexpected purchase leaps unbidden into your hands
4. Shopping Arid: trapped in an environment where there are what MP’sFC described as ‘itemries’ none of which are of any possible interest to you e.g. car parts. There is a very distinct limit to how far I can look at gasket thingies and pretend that they are symmetrical op art found objects!

And, the making of lists is a lazy form of blog writing, though it does appeal to the dilettante in all of us.

I suppose that ‘satisfying’ would, really, have to be defined in terms of sex and family and friends – this would be the first level of ‘satisfying’ and a little too profound for my flippant take on life today.

I have eaten a square of 85% cocoa by Lindt and I feel very much more serious than I did a few seconds ago, but not serious enough to write more.

So many words; so little inclination to use them.

Tomorrow!