The silliness of things.

We only ever buy newspapers at the weekend. Well, occasionally, if we are travelling by train in the UK we buy one to read on the train. This is especially so if Phil spots one that offers a free bottle of water. Otherwise, as I said, only at the weekend. Life is too short to read a whole newspaper every day of the week. So, today being Sunday, when I ran through the village this morning I stopped at the Co-op to buy the paper, among other things. 

It was only as the cashier totted stuff up that I realised that I had accidentally picked up two copies. The cashier was gaily ringing up two copies without a concern in the world. I suppose it was conceivable that I was picking up a paper for a neighbour but you would have thought she might have asked if I really planned on reading the same paper twice. Fortunately I noticed in time! 

Looking at the magazine section over breakfast I spotted some things about fashion. First of all, in an item called "We love", one of those features that selects things you might possible covet, there was a coat that looked as if it was made up of rejects from the kind of rugs my grandmother used to make. In reality, I think it was made up of sections of lambskin dyed in a range of colours and patchworked together. Part of an exclusive collection by Net-a-porter, it had a ridiculous price tag. Sorry, fashionistas, for just over £1,500 I expect more than something that looks like my grandmother's old rug! 

Then there was a so-called teddy bear being sold by Harrods. This is the Burberry Thomas bear, another exclusive item, made of cashmere (woven fabric, not even fur!) and retailing at £425. Who buys these things? You couldn't give it to a child to cuddle and chew and drop in its breakfast Weetabix! 

I moved on to "10 things we learned at London Fashion Week. The first thing I learned is that the models all look androgynous and miserable. Are they not allowed to smile at all? Is it like passport photos? Nothing else of great import was included in the article. One fashion designer is promoting the wearing of bumbags. Not, however, the kind that make you look, to quote the article "as though you are an American tourist in fear of being mugged for your passport" but an enormous thing with "room for everything in there from your supersized mobile phone to a spare pair of shoes". There are two odd things there: mobile phones, which everyone wanted to be as small as possible, are getting bigger and people expect to carry spare shoes around with them! How odd!! 

Later I found an article called "What does this dog say about me?" It featured a young lady called Nicola who owns a Pomeranian, the same kind of small dog that our granddaughter turned up with recently. This young lady is 22 and works as an administrator for Dior. What exactly does a 22 year old administrator do? Anyway, she has this dog and apparently people often tell her, "That's not a real dog - it's a teddy bear." Which is also my reaction. The other bit of my reaction is that it might be cheaper to have a teddy bear, even one of those exclusive Harrods teddy bears. 

The journalist writing the column was quite impressed at one so young as Nicola owning a dog at all. According to her it shows commitment and the ability to love something other than herself. She also commented that you can tell Nicola works in the fashion industry as "she's wearing one of those weird no-sleeved coats which are supposedly cool at the moment. Nobody non-fashion wears those, because they're silly". I second that ! 

Here's my final bit of silliness for today, a sad bit of silliness: a friend of mine posted on Facebook an item about the shooting in Oregon. A gun shop owner in the USA has been stocking up on assault rifles. Why? Because "there is always a rush after a shooting". 

What can I say?