How bad can shopping really be?
Toni has what amounts to a pathological hatred of the whole process. This is part of that kaleidoscope of human response which finds no sympathetic response in me.
In spite of living for so long in literature, where the people you meet are not necessarily those who you would wish to be living in your street, or indeed in many circumstances in your universe, I find that I have more in common with the reprobates of the great tragic Russian novels than with a person who does not regard shopping as an essential element of civilized living!
Shopping for Essentials this morning was the usual high tension affair with Toni pacing along the aisles like a highly strung aesthete sipping a crème de menthe thrown among the laager drinking loping canaille. I do realize that the last image is somewhat inappropriate but trying to give an adequate impression of Toni’s lack of ease doing something which should be joyous does tempt me into the areas of literary desperation!
A Sunday morning is the time when most of the population of Castelldefels seems to take the opportunity to visit their local shops to load up on the weekly necessities. In Spanish and Catalan shopping trolleys there always seems to be more bulk because of the iniquitous need to purchase bottles of water as the stuff which comes through the taps is so vile – safe, but vile!
Who, I ask you, dispassionate reader of these lines, who does not find the range of something as mundane as bleach laid out in serried rows for our delectation fascinating. Bleach, you might say, is bleach. But such a simplistic statement ignores the combined efforts of grasping capitalism aided and abetted by an equally grasping advertising industry. Different bottle shapes, colours, sizes, type faces, properties, strengths, viscosities and scents – not to mention prices. Faced with such variety; such a plethora who can resist at least pausing and marvelling at the range and choice offered in the most ordinary and humble of household liquids?
Or perhaps it’s just me.
On safer ground I have just started reading ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The opening conceit of the book, that there exists in Barcelona The Cemetery of Forgotten books where, “books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands,” is one which appeals strongly to me.
The novel itself takes the form of a sort of detective story as the hero of the novel tries to discover more of the life of the novelist whose book he chooses on his first visit to this magical place.
The direction of the novel reminded me of the remarkable book ‘Quest for Corvo’ by A. J. A. Symons where the ostensible academic research for a literary biography was actually the basis for a much more revealing study of the subject and the author.
After a couple of hundred pages I can see why this novel has been translated from Spanish and why it has sold over seven million copies around the world! It is the sort of book that you read dreading its conclusion because there will be no more to read!
The computer I am using is becoming skittish and the research that I was supposed to have done over the weekend has been a little more stressful that it should have been.
How far we have progressed when what would have taken hours to find and download is now intolerable when it takes more than a few seconds!
Perhaps I should remember those happy frustration filled days when Windows 3.1 was the operating (!) system of choice and be grateful that we have progressed so far.
Irony!
Toni has what amounts to a pathological hatred of the whole process. This is part of that kaleidoscope of human response which finds no sympathetic response in me.
In spite of living for so long in literature, where the people you meet are not necessarily those who you would wish to be living in your street, or indeed in many circumstances in your universe, I find that I have more in common with the reprobates of the great tragic Russian novels than with a person who does not regard shopping as an essential element of civilized living!
Shopping for Essentials this morning was the usual high tension affair with Toni pacing along the aisles like a highly strung aesthete sipping a crème de menthe thrown among the laager drinking loping canaille. I do realize that the last image is somewhat inappropriate but trying to give an adequate impression of Toni’s lack of ease doing something which should be joyous does tempt me into the areas of literary desperation!
A Sunday morning is the time when most of the population of Castelldefels seems to take the opportunity to visit their local shops to load up on the weekly necessities. In Spanish and Catalan shopping trolleys there always seems to be more bulk because of the iniquitous need to purchase bottles of water as the stuff which comes through the taps is so vile – safe, but vile!
Who, I ask you, dispassionate reader of these lines, who does not find the range of something as mundane as bleach laid out in serried rows for our delectation fascinating. Bleach, you might say, is bleach. But such a simplistic statement ignores the combined efforts of grasping capitalism aided and abetted by an equally grasping advertising industry. Different bottle shapes, colours, sizes, type faces, properties, strengths, viscosities and scents – not to mention prices. Faced with such variety; such a plethora who can resist at least pausing and marvelling at the range and choice offered in the most ordinary and humble of household liquids?
Or perhaps it’s just me.
On safer ground I have just started reading ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The opening conceit of the book, that there exists in Barcelona The Cemetery of Forgotten books where, “books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands,” is one which appeals strongly to me.
The novel itself takes the form of a sort of detective story as the hero of the novel tries to discover more of the life of the novelist whose book he chooses on his first visit to this magical place.
The direction of the novel reminded me of the remarkable book ‘Quest for Corvo’ by A. J. A. Symons where the ostensible academic research for a literary biography was actually the basis for a much more revealing study of the subject and the author.
After a couple of hundred pages I can see why this novel has been translated from Spanish and why it has sold over seven million copies around the world! It is the sort of book that you read dreading its conclusion because there will be no more to read!
The computer I am using is becoming skittish and the research that I was supposed to have done over the weekend has been a little more stressful that it should have been.
How far we have progressed when what would have taken hours to find and download is now intolerable when it takes more than a few seconds!
Perhaps I should remember those happy frustration filled days when Windows 3.1 was the operating (!) system of choice and be grateful that we have progressed so far.
Irony!
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