This Christmas Eve I departed from my usual wan indifference towards the season's festivities and wrote a completely over-the-top status marquee on Facebook wishing everyone a "groundbreakingly positive", "marvellously superb", "unbelievably incredible" 2010 -- only just stopping short of "so uproariously funny that you'll spend most of the year on the toilet, urinating with mirth". Payback. That evening I came down with a particularly virulent flu and spent the following days bed-bound with a high fever. The fever has passed but now I have an Industrial Era cough. I mention this because it occurred to me while taking various medication how much I like the design of pharmaceutical packaging. I suppose that, generally, people are too ill to notice, but I like the minimalist layout together with the unusual names -- Cinfatós, Bisolgrip, Fumil Forte -- and the pantone colours of mustard, forest green and cerise that evoke the 1960s and 1970s. The design of pharmaceutical packaging has not really changed very much through the decades.
It was 23C here yesterday so I was determined to get out of the bedroom -- which at this point was interchangeable with that of Thora Hird's -- and get some fresh air. The partner and I drove through the Albaida valley whose tourism moto is "Disfrútala con los cinco sentidos" (Enjoy it with your five senses). A bit of a tall order as I have no sense of taste or smell at the moment. We reached the coast at Gandía and drove south to the comparatively new, and enormous, shopping mall at Ondara. This centro commercial has British high street outlets and even an English bookshop stocked with vastly over-priced, TV tie-in pictorials and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jamie Oliver next to an hillock of themed recipe books. But that is what publishing has come to mean nowadays -- very few people are interested in a finely crafted novel with impeccable character development. Also, there aren't any pictures, so there's nothing to emulate.
I forget what it's like to see British people in groups. What struck me was the vague look of annoyance of certain women as they glided past me on the down elevator, and the expression of resignation -- if not ennui -- in their partner's face. But then some of us are designed to annoy and others designed to be annoyed. There were a few sightings of the long-term expat female: fifty-something, deep perma-tan, vigorously bottle-blonde, kohl-lidded eyes, could get quite nasty in an argument.
It really could have been Milton Keynes. I was glad to get out of there.
I'm going to the barbers, on the principle that a haircut makes one instantly feel better.
It was 23C here yesterday so I was determined to get out of the bedroom -- which at this point was interchangeable with that of Thora Hird's -- and get some fresh air. The partner and I drove through the Albaida valley whose tourism moto is "Disfrútala con los cinco sentidos" (Enjoy it with your five senses). A bit of a tall order as I have no sense of taste or smell at the moment. We reached the coast at Gandía and drove south to the comparatively new, and enormous, shopping mall at Ondara. This centro commercial has British high street outlets and even an English bookshop stocked with vastly over-priced, TV tie-in pictorials and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jamie Oliver next to an hillock of themed recipe books. But that is what publishing has come to mean nowadays -- very few people are interested in a finely crafted novel with impeccable character development. Also, there aren't any pictures, so there's nothing to emulate.
I forget what it's like to see British people in groups. What struck me was the vague look of annoyance of certain women as they glided past me on the down elevator, and the expression of resignation -- if not ennui -- in their partner's face. But then some of us are designed to annoy and others designed to be annoyed. There were a few sightings of the long-term expat female: fifty-something, deep perma-tan, vigorously bottle-blonde, kohl-lidded eyes, could get quite nasty in an argument.
It really could have been Milton Keynes. I was glad to get out of there.
I'm going to the barbers, on the principle that a haircut makes one instantly feel better.
1 comments:
I really look forward to reading your blogs James. I hate the word blog....your Observations on life.
The packaging of perfumes as well as medicines seem to have a certain Artistic merit, only you expect it from fragrances.
I adored staying with a friend in Parma this year and it was so easy to fit in and to make the most of your day by just walking around or sitting chatting to people.
What alot of people forget is that shopping doesn't fill the void, the emptiness,the yearning for more.
As for me, I could have gazed at the sea all day.
more soon please.
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