Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Thursday 25 November 2010

Ahhh, ain't that cute?

Marja-Leena has disgorged and photographed her pencil/ballpoint container and seems unimpressed by its contents, although to my eye the stuff looks expensive and “artistic” (another way of saying expensive). The contents of mine are predictable, mundane and cheap but the container itself has a history. It’s a Maxwell House coffee tin decorated with magazine cut-outs by my elder daughter, aged 5 – 7, while we in America (1966 – 1972). What is more remarkable is that resides on my windowsill here in Hereford. Prior to returning to the UK we had a garage sale and then threw away thirteen bags of viable household possessions and clothes. But this tin was retained. Neither of us is what you’d call sentimental.

11 comments:

Sir Hugh said...

Not sentimental? You who cries every time you listen to/see Cosi!

marja-leena said...

I had to laugh at your label - 'pure molasses", hehehhe! Thanks for responding to my post with your wonderful story of the coffee tin. Rather than sentimental, I'd say you reveal affection for that once young child who is your daughter.

herhimnbryn said...

I agree with Sir Hugh!

PS Well, you have set me a poser for the image challenge and no mistake. Now I wonder where I can find said Vincent in W.Australia?

Sir Hugh said...

Oops! Wrong opera - should be La Bohemme.

Allan Lloyd said...

Hey, it's never too late in the day to shed a tear aprés-mimi.

Roderick Robinson said...

Sir Hugh: Both operas in fact. With Cosi the tears flowed fastest when I travelled business class to Montreal, plugged into my Walkman and being served 1978 Ch. Lagrange from a proper sized bottle.

M-L: But my pencils/pens ain't a patch on your'n.

HHB: Goalposts have been shifted, re. the image challenge.

FigMince: Everybody cries for Mimi. Even Jonathan Miller, as director, doing a rehearsal for La Boheme in front of TV cameras.

Unknown said...

A fine and handsome tin, which if it were flat would go in a scrapbook. Sentimental! Of course Sir Hugh is right and herhimbryn, but I wouldn't dare say it, old fool that I am.

Hattie said...

I feel deep shame as I look at my pen and pencil cup. It is a failed raku pot that someone threw out and has a selection of items: not what I usually need, namely pens, but many yellow markers, broken pencils, a hair clip and a clothespin.

Anil P said...

Pen-holders will eventually create a sentimental gene if if there isn't one to start with :-)

Anil P said...

Pen/Pencil holders will eventually create a sentimental gene if there isn't one to start with :-)

Roderick Robinson said...

Plutarch: I've tended to think of sentimentality as an ailment, spread by the same bacterium as that which brings about uncontrollable nostalgia.

However, sentimentality aroused by music is more forgivable than the other types. Certainly it is less resistible. As usual Proust knew all about it, hence the Vinteuil sonata.

Hattie: A raku pot I had to Google; the examples shown were impressive and you may have money lying idle there. I'd have preferred to have tweaked reality by admitting I used a Ragu pot avaliable in supermarkets and a container for made-up pasta sauce.

Anil P: I find your suggestion incredibly sinister, and the sensation is not ameliorated by the happy face at the end of your comment.