Sunday, November 24, 2013

Pool cat, presents and shopping

Memories of summer. Cat by the pool.

Contemplating briefly sections of newspaper and magazines dedicated to Christmast present suggestion makes think. Advertisers are of course expected to flock to support such features, but there are so many of them that their value must cancel each other out. Why I wonder would readers be drawn to such arbitrary recommendations? What can a journalist assigned to such a task know of the real  needs and desires of the wives, husbands sweethearts, children and parents of readers? The articles are of course no more than random, recycled catalogues or the fruit of cursory window shopping. Presents meanwhile should not be neglected. Signs and tributes of love and admiration, their inspiration should spring from a knowledge and understanding of the recipient by the giver. Any less and they become the worthless parings of commerce and ritual. Forget them.

After a month more or less confined to the house shopping in the supermarket this morning might be  thought mundane  by some but for me  it is a reminder of freedom and independence. To choose a chicken. To pick the pineapple that appeals.  Even if all the products are bred and packed to look the same. How fortunate we are!

 

2 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

You mustn't draw back the curtain on the journos, leaving them naked in front of the readers. All of us at one time or another have claimed rather more wisdom than we were entitled to. Just imagine, people once paid us to do what we are presently doing for free. A mad world my masters.

Lucy said...

Perfect tortoiseshell puss. I like that blue squiggle on the right of the picture too; if that had been part of a painting it would have look like an abstract, decorative flourish.

That creative side of present giving, (and sometimes making), 'spring[ing] from a knowledge and understanding of the recipient but the giver' is absorbing and satisfying, and sometimes frustrating, and largely about shots in the dark, since one rareliy knows quite if one has succeeded. But there are all kinds of ways of exercising it, and as you say, we shouldn't reject or neglect it, even in the face of the cynical commercial frenzy. I don't often get to read the journalists' suggestions you refer to, but I suppose there might be odd moments of serendipitous discovery involved.