Do you want whine with that? - a commentary.

One of those fucking ubiquitous Fornasetti plates that I see in every fucking magazine.

 

It’s that time of year again when I’m feeling melancholy. Melancholy and itchy and restless and angry. I feel like I’ve left the iron on but I’m half way to Montreal. Please, please excuse me while I rant. Blogging is therapeutic.

I just went through a stack of magazines donated by my belle soeur. What a lot of crap. No offence Sis, but I’m tired of the platitudes, the Disneyfication, and the false Hallmark sentimentalities found within their pages. I used to be a devotee of fashion magazines, graduating to decorating magazines, but then the mags became full of dogma. Rules. I don't need to be told what to do. The only magazines I subscribe to now are French so I don’t know what they are impelling me to do.

Rules abound. Gentle suggestions that make you feel bad about yourself. The fashion industry, of which I once thought I’d be a part, has been trying to sell me plaid every autumn since I was 12 years old. I found out from my step-monster-in-law that there is a proper way to edge your flower beds. French edging. What fresh hell is this?

Decorating magazines – do people really need obelisques and reflecting balls on their mantels? Have they not had enough life to decorate their nests properly? Can one become “bohemian”? Isn’t it a schtick one develops over time?

Never been a big one on false conventions. Grooms’ cakes. Wedding rehearsals. What’s to rehearse? Do what my mother did in post-war England. Walk down the aisle. Get wed. Have a reception at your mum’s. Enjoy a couple of Bass Pale Ales. Go to Hastings. Get over yourselves. I CAN NOT STAND the “to the manor born” mentality of weddings. Couples puking their guts out just days prior at their own stags and hen parties adopt a genteel, demure attitude, following rules that were set up in Jacobean times if not earlier. Then they puke their guts out again, perform some primordial rituals and commence paying off their credit card debt. Because of these biases I’ve been with the same man for 24 years and we have yet to marry. Luckily he is as biased as me.

 I’ve missed the memo on a number of things – when Peking was supposed to be called Beijing. Bombay – Mumbai and so on. I apparently missed the memo telling me that a selection of wine or cheese is now called a “flight”. WTF.

Any how. I’ve left this blog untouched for quite a while. Maybe I’ll start back at it. Interesting themes for interesting people. Watch this space.