The Blog of Small Things

Little things make all the difference; this is a blog about the minutiae of life.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

LEAFLETS

As people who know me will testify, I’m no mathematician, but I would estimate that if I lay end to end, all the leaflets with which I come into contact every week, they would reach from where I live in Wiltshire, all the way to Coventry. With this in mind, I’m sure you’ll agree this is a disagreeable situation!

This morning I received no actual post, but the postman still deposited five pieces of paper through my letterbox. Did you know I live in a hard water area? No, neither did I. I also received “Important information about energy in your home” , as well as offers by the local estate agent to rent out my house for me, a menu for a takeaway I am never likely to use and an appeal from “Save the Long-eared Ant” or some such charity for me to set up a direct debit so it is ‘easier’ for me to donate to them. This final one immediately gets handed to my daughter, who is delighted that her mysterious benefactor has sent her yet another free pen.

A trip to the shops now yields another handful of leaflets, offering me one fingernail manicured free if I pay to get the other nine done, asking me if I want to object to the proposed new grey pavements when the council promised cream, and telling me I’m paying too much for my electricity. I go into the bank to pay in a cheque and the clerk tries to sell me a mortgage. She persists by telling me they can beat my current mortgage rate by 1.2% (even though I haven’t told her my current mortgage rate) AND give me 10% cash back. 10% of what? I ask. The mortgage? The house value, or the 1.2%? She looks confused and gives me a leaflet to take with me.

I go into the post office to send a parcel and am told I am paying too much for my phone calls, I really should switch over to the Post Office who it seems are only offering the service out of the goodness of their hearts. I tell them I really don’t have the time to think about it today. “Well if I just give you this leaflet, you can read it when you get home. It tells you everything you need to know.”

On leaving the post office I am handed a leaflet which in large letters asks: “Did you know you only use 10% of your brains’ potential?” Well no, I didn’t actually...but that’s probably because I’m only using 10% of my brains potential! Within that 10% though is the ability to recognise I only have one brain, unlike the writer of the leaflet, who clearly thinks I have at least two.

Speaking of brains though, the language and tone of these leaflets is the only thing which irritates me more than their abundance. They seem to assume my thought processes are less complex than those of a pond-based creature. Nowhere is this more the case than the leaflets with which I have come into contact since I became a parent. The authors of these leaflets find it difficult to tell the difference between motherhood and a lobotomy. On hearing I was pregnant, the local health visitor couldn’t wait to run round to our house to foist approximately ten leaflets on me, with titles such as “Why you shouldn’t smoke when you are pregnant”, “Our breast feeding policy” and “How aromatherapy can help with pain relief during labour” These managed to be both patronising and alarming. Surely, if there is going to be any legislation concerning MY breasts, I should be the one to write it! At the very least I feel it only polite to ask my opinion, rather than handing me what is effectively the minutes of a meeting I didn’t even know had taken place. And as for the aromatherapy: oh PLEASE, I’m about to push another human being out of my body, and as much as I love the heady scent of lavender, let’s be honest, it can’t help me with this.

This only intensified once I had actually given birth; some days I found it hard to locate my daughter through the piles of leaflets stacking up informing me how dangerous the world is for her, especially with a mother so stupid she apparently needs a leaflet entitled “Don’t suffocate your baby with a pillow.” Goodness knows how I would have managed without that leaflet. There should be a leaflet about the dangers of having too many leaflets, containing bullet points about the possibility of paper cuts or slipping on a leaflet, a la banana skin.

I never thought I would long for the days when an anxious little man quietly walked around city centres wearing a sandwich board and trying not to get in the way. Whatever happened to that man? I would definitely advocate a return to the sandwich board approach, because every time I get handed a leaflet I feel like the end of the world is nigh.

Anything more irritating than this proliferation of leaflets? Yes, actually, the proliferation of people knocking on my front door claiming to want to help me save money. At least the Jehovah's Witness - who just wants to save me, rather than save me money - I can immediately silence by lying and saying I’m Jewish, for which no doubt I will go to Hell. He still calls once a month though - “Yep, still Jewish” I say - and he walks off, writing something on a clipboard. No, what really irritates me is the man who wants to know how much my gas bills are. He stands on my doorstep, wittering on as though I have all the time in the world to discuss how much I am paying for my gas per unit or whatever it is. I tell him I have no idea how much I pay per unit and he looks astounded. He tells me he can save me money. “Do you want to save money on your gas bills?” he asks, so I tell him no, not really. “You don’t want to save money on your gas bills?” he says, incredulous. No, right at this moment, I don’t. I want to go to the toilet, behind me I can hear my three year old attempting to put us into negative equity and despite it being three o clock in the afternoon, I haven’t had time for lunch yet. He is still talking - something about how all the money I save by the end of the year could be enough to buy myself a lipstick - so in the end I say the only thing I can think of that might just make him go away. “Have you got a leaflet?”

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

PENS

Monday 28th August 2006.

Since I was a small child I have loved pens, and for many years now I have had a particular passion for fountain pens. Over the years I have furnished myself with a range of them, and on each occasion have had change from a £20 note!

Parkers are the ones I use the most. One in Particular, which cost me £12.99 when I was at university, I find especially pleasant to use, but despite this I do not have any real affection for it as an individual, and I am only moderately ashamed to admit I suspect this is because it was cheap and is primarily made of plastic. Sinfully I covet expensive and beautiful fountain pens. I drift off to sleep thinking of the elegant design of the Cross Townsend Tuxedo, or of the Pelikan Toledo M700 with it’s heavenly green barrel, art nouveau silver engraving and two tone solid gold nib, each pen lovingly hand made. I conveniently forget that to buy one of these would mean only having a small amount of change from £1000.

I hang around department stores, silently peering into the Mont Blanc cabinets, admiring them through the glass in a way which I fear is worryingly similar to the behaviour of a stalker outside the bedroom window of her ex-lover. I don’t even like the Mont Blanc pens one tends to find in department stores! I cannot stand the black barrel and the gold thick and thin lines which punctuate it, but even though it does not float my aesthetic boat, I know - I just absolutely know - that if I were to write with it and feel the ink flowing through the 18ct gold nib via my imperfect human hand, I know I would love it, adore it, and forsake all other writing instruments for the rest of my days. They are the relations of the Mont Blanc pens that have actually taken my breath away when I have seen them: the White Metals range, the Starwalker, the Boheme and the unspeakably beautifully designed Greta Garbo fountain pen in their range are other worldly - they are the Aston Martin DB9s where Parker are the Ford Fiestas. There’s nothing wrong with a Ford Fiesta of course; it’s reliable and does what it’s supposed to, but you’re never going to be astounded by its beauty or standard of finish and it’s not going to last you for the rest of your life. As with my £12.99 pen, I know if I lose it I can just meander down to the High Street and buy another one, which will look exactly the same, do exactly the same job, in exactly the same, utterly souless and unremarkable way. I’ve got six Ford Fiestas on my desk!

I have been married for six years. What is my first thought when I remember our honeymoon? Do I reminisce about all the time the two of us had together wondering around Rouen? Do I daydream fondly of time spent driving through the gorgeous French countryside? Do I think of the little cafe opposite our hotel where I had the best profiteroles I have ever had in my life? OR, is my first thought about the small and exquisite solid silver fountain pen I looked at in a little stationery shop just off the main square? The pen whose weight in my hand I can still feel if I close my eyes? The one with sensitive and feminine engraving on its silver nib? The one I now think a bargain (albeit still unaffordable!) at £215? I’ll let you work that one out for yourselves!

Sunday, August 27, 2006

COFFEE

Sunday 27th August 2006.

Until recently I very rarely drank coffee; I simply did not see the point. In my opinion it was a moderately tasty, unrefreshing beverage which encouraged a not entirely pleasant physical stimulation. Now I know I was just drinking the wrong coffee! Here, for the first time I will say: my name is Annabel and I am a coffee-addict.

This transformation came about several weeks ago when on holiday at the in-laws. I’d had a particularly unsuccessful night of sleep and there was a very full day ahead of us entertaining three children (my daughter and her two cousins). At 9.30 in the morning we found ourselves in the playground of a local cafe and I was so tired I could barely formulate a coherent sentence; I just sat admiring the seemingly endless energy of my shorter relations. My husband handed me his coffee and told me to take just a sip. Approximately one minute later I had bought my own coffee with accompanying croissant and was hooked. Not only was it a beautiful taste, it made me feel fantastic, and not even in that shaky, jittery slightly psychotic way that people report about coffee, but just in a really happy, energised, let’s get on with life kind of a way. When we returned home I was a woman possessed and we now have at least five different types of coffee in the cupboard (I am assuming you have realised I talk only of ‘proper’ coffee - that abomination known as ‘instant’ simply does not exist on my radar). In my current circumstances of raising a very bright and spirited three year old, whilst establishing a writing career and about to begin a Master’s programme, I believe coffee has saved me. I have no doubts it will be coffee which will help me get through my 30,000 word dissertation and it is to coffee that I now say thank you - I salute you!

SOME FACTS ABOUT COFFEE.
Frederick the Great had his coffee made with champagne and a bit of mustard!

Coffee is the second most traded product in the world after oil. World wide production is approximately six million metric tonnes.

Coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide with over 400 billion cups consumed each year.

Beethoven was an avid coffee drinker, favouring a cup containing 60 beans!

After they are roasted, and when the coffee beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporising aromas.

It takes six years for a coffee tree to produce it’s first coffee cherries.


SOME GOOD BOOKS ABOUT COFFEE.
The World Encyclopedia of Coffee, by Mary Banks (pp.256. Published by Lorenz Books, 2002. ISBN: 0754810933.)

The Coffee House: A Cultural History, by Markman Ellis. (pp.256. Published by Weidenfeld Nicolson, 2004. ISBN: 0297843192.)

The New Complete Coffee Book: A Gourmet Guide to Buying, Brewing and Cooking, by Sara Perry. (pp.120. Published by Chronicle Books, 2003. ISBN: 0811840212.)

Pour Your Heart into it: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schulz and Dori Jones Lang. (pp.368. Published by Hyperion, 1998. ISBN: 0786883561.)