Month: April 2008

Adventures in shopping

On By Laura MorganIn Stuff
After my confident assertion that expensive bags are no better than cheap ones, my bright blue bag broke as soon as I tried to use it. I took it back and swapped it for the only remaining one, which is the same but bright yellow. It’s kind of…really…horrible. I’m going to use it every day and hope that I come to love it as you might the ugliest kitten in the litter, who may not be cute but whose ugliness is somehow adorable.

Edit: Horrifically, I’ve just realised that my purse is dark green, and the two together remind me ineradicably of my old school uniform. Bleuch. I mean, I quite liked it at the time, but it’s not a look I’ve ever yearned to recreate.

A photo

On By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful

A photo

My camera isn’t working so I can’t take any new photos, but I wanted to celebrate the sun coming out, so here’s one taken two summers ago. I like it because they’re having so much fun, and because M looks like a lion hiding in the undergrowth. Also because the thing at the front on the right looks like a giant cartoon bug, but probably isn’t.

A profitable lunchtime

On By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful, Stuff4 Comments

…by which, obviously, I mean one in which I spent money, rather than earned it. Last year, when my income went up from “I can pay the rent and go out to eat” to “I can buy an iPod on a whim” (it’s since gone back to the first one), I decided that rather than spend £10 on boots that last three months, I would invest wisely in expensive but high-quality items that would last forever and end up costing me less money than the cheap version.

Well, it turns out that expensive boots (and bags, and clothes) don’t last any longer; they just cost more. So it’s back to spending £10, or in this case £5, on a new bag, which is bright blue and doesn’t go with anything, but that’s ok, because it only cost £5!

I thought I had done more shopping than that, but it turns out the rest of what I bought was my lunch. Well, that’s ok too.

Also, and not unrelatedly (the sun makes me spend money): it’s spring! I know I’ve said it before, but this time it’s properly true. I even had to take off my incredibly warm and deeply impractical fake fur coat while I was outside. You know, for a bit.

Overheard

On By Laura MorganIn Uncategorized

Snippets of two equally alarming conversations being had by people on mobile phones whom I passed on my way to a meeting earlier on:

 

“…do you get it?  It has to stop and it has to stop now…”

 

“…because that’s it, if I have to, I will use your children against you…”

 

Both of which made my most aggressive phone conversation today (“I don’t think you’re listening to me, I don’t want to transfer any funds anywhere”) seem positively playful  in comparison.

 

(My favourite ever overheard phonecall was on a bus on Oxford Street, when a guy answered his phone and said “Yep…no…no…NO!  NO!  That’s it: I’m closing the Bureau de Change!”)

Local history

On By Laura MorganIn Books3 Comments

I’ve just finished The Dreaming Suburb, which I am ashamed to say is my first attempt at reading anything by R.F. Delderfield who, as well as writing about places I know, is a distant relative and therefore somebody I should have investigated earlier. It’s a domestic saga set between the wars, which makes it sound much less fun than it was. It’s plotty and absorbing, and every so often there’s a beautiful piece of writing that lifts it above the gently engaging story of unassuming folk that it otherwise is. Plus, it’s fun spotting the places I know and reading them described as they were eighty years ago. I was particularly excited about the single mention of Elmers End.