Shall I tell you a story?

Suitcase of my dreams

26/9/2013

Sitting over a flat white at the Costa Coffee in the departure lounge of Dubai International Airport the other day, not twenty-four hours after I'd visited the Waitrose in the main Dubai shopping mall (the one with the aquarium, in the financial district), I happened to notice, above my head, an ad for Samsonite luggage.
    In the picture, a woman with a couch behind her and her Samsonite hard-shell, four-wheeled carry-on bag beside her. She was wearing a long, one-piece item of clothing that perhaps she'd pulled on over her head after getting up off the couch. Standing in a white cube/bedroom/consulting room. About to step out into the rather more colourful world around her white space.
    Now, if I was a digital native, I would have snapped a pic and uploaded it here. But ads (still) need words, and the words were what got my attention, and I'm going to use words to zero in on that.
    The tagline for this ad was:
    < Step out. Listen to that inner voice. Follow your heart. Embrace every possibility. >
    With your Samsonite carry-on bag beside you.
    I like that the tag wasn't < Room for lots of socks > or < You can squeeze everything into this bag > or even < Cubic capacity: x litres > or whatever.
    I like the way that (some) advertising is flying free of whatever product is being advertised, and describing instead a (spiritual?) quest for some kind of self-actualisation. Follow your heart, et cetera. We should listen to these ad agencies. They seem to be onto something.
    But I'm not quite sure what to think about my early-morning visit to the Samsonite website. My bag will hold out for a few more possibility-embracing excursions yet.
    Although it isn't shiny-red. And it hasn't got four wheels.

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In a desk diary scavenged from a house of the dead, a man records his own experiences of the end times: what he has to do to survive; how he came to be marooned where he is; how he reacts to the discovery that he is not alone.

Over coffee, a young journalist gets The Message.

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What happens here

This site is updated weekly, usually on a Friday although I might change that (again). I write it because (1) I like writing it and (2) I like having a deadline. More often than not, it works out as a commentary on the week just passed*.
There are no ads, no pop-ups and no tricky business with cookies. I don't take money for my own opinions. [Except when they come out in book form.] I write this for myself, without a set agenda, on any subject that catches my attention. If you're interested enough, it's not hard to work out my interests. Not impossible, anyway.
*Although I seem to have gone away from that recently. Normal service may or may not be resumed.

No data is kept on this website overnight. Blog posts are usually shared to my Facebook page. We can discuss them there if you feel so inclined.

There's a page for this, but maybe you'd like to see the cover here?

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A very green picture. I can't remember where I took this.

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Also available in English. Look further down.

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Categories
(Started 4th November 2017; forgotten shortly after that.)

Kitchen parenting

I have teenage children. When they're home, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: "Dad! We're going to make a mess in the kitchen!
   "Great!" I will reply, picking up on the tone of voice. "What are you going to do?"
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Variously available online, in a range of formats.

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Okay, so a certain President recently made a speech to his people, in which he told them that their country's military "don't do pinpricks". His intention was to get across that when those soldiers do a "limited" or even "targeted" strike, it hurts. But those of us in the cynical wing of the listening public took it the other way. More.

Ceased to exist. Sorry.

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Early morning, Church Street, Falmouth

9th May 2014

On the day that I wrote this, the early news told us of a parade in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Crimea remained annexed, and the Russia/Ukraine crisis was not resolved. At around half eight, the BBC’s reporter in Moscow was cut off in mid-sentence summarising the military display; the Today programme on Radio 4 cut to the sports news. More.

Riddle. What are you? You're a conversation!