The Wild Cry of Love
Nov. 17th, 2012 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyLivestreaming kittens! They always seem to be asleep when I look.
It feels as though someone has flicked a switch and turned on Christmas this week. It's everywhere. Decorations in the shops, carols piped in, gift catalogues in the paper. The Christmas issue of the supermarket's monthly magazine had pages of gift ideas, including a tampon starter kit in a sleek, black purse. Imagine the lucky girl who unwraps that on Christmas morning. The knick-knack section of the newsagent featured a ceramic cube with a painted slogan: MY MUM IS MY BFF. 'What's a BFF?' asked my mother, then, when I told her, 'Get me that and I'll kill you.'
Today I went to an exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the local paper. My favourite exhibit was the front page marking the Queen's coronation. Imagine what that page would look like if that happened today. That would be the only story, wouldn't it? Maybe one big photo; maybe an introductory article leading to the pages and pages of coverage inside. That wasn't how it was done back then. The coronation story took up one quadrant of the front page. It was so short they had to fill up the column with a paragraph containing the breathless news that the Egg Board was putting up egg prices by half a shilling. Front page news!
I have been meaning to go to that exhibition for weeks, but I finally got my act into gear when I realised that this was its final weekend. In a couple of weeks, the local gallery's next exhibition will open, which will be all about pop culture aliens, including: the alien from Alien, an Ood and Matt LeBlanc's spacesuit from Lost in Space. I think I'll go to that one too.
It feels as though someone has flicked a switch and turned on Christmas this week. It's everywhere. Decorations in the shops, carols piped in, gift catalogues in the paper. The Christmas issue of the supermarket's monthly magazine had pages of gift ideas, including a tampon starter kit in a sleek, black purse. Imagine the lucky girl who unwraps that on Christmas morning. The knick-knack section of the newsagent featured a ceramic cube with a painted slogan: MY MUM IS MY BFF. 'What's a BFF?' asked my mother, then, when I told her, 'Get me that and I'll kill you.'
Today I went to an exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the local paper. My favourite exhibit was the front page marking the Queen's coronation. Imagine what that page would look like if that happened today. That would be the only story, wouldn't it? Maybe one big photo; maybe an introductory article leading to the pages and pages of coverage inside. That wasn't how it was done back then. The coronation story took up one quadrant of the front page. It was so short they had to fill up the column with a paragraph containing the breathless news that the Egg Board was putting up egg prices by half a shilling. Front page news!
I have been meaning to go to that exhibition for weeks, but I finally got my act into gear when I realised that this was its final weekend. In a couple of weeks, the local gallery's next exhibition will open, which will be all about pop culture aliens, including: the alien from Alien, an Ood and Matt LeBlanc's spacesuit from Lost in Space. I think I'll go to that one too.