I found myself at a museum today. A rural life museum. Not sure why I needed to go all the way to a rural life museum to experience rural life, cos this life of mine is already a rural one, but it was OK. Sort of interestingish. Mildly more entertaining than rolling about on a bed of drawing pins, I think.
I made some pictures. Nearly 150 of them in fact – it’s quite silly. Here some of them are.
We ended up staying until after the museum had closed. Watchless idiots, we are, even though some of us did have timepieces about our respective persons. Fortunately a shrivelled old woman had been glaring at us through the CCTV cameras, and she shooed us away. Then there was a burst of thrills as we looked for an exit, and found all the gates locked.
We escaped, as evinced by this article. But how? Did we gnaw through the fence? Did we whittle an aeroplane out of twigs? Did we dig a hole? I’ll leave you to speculate, because the truth is disappointingly dull.
I actually once got trapped in the lingerie department of Marks & Spencer. It was a bit embarrassing, more than anything, as my acquaintance and I wandered about looking for the lampshade department, melting under the glares of the shrivelled elderly women who were roaming about. Not too shabby an anecdote really, and I feel it’s been wasted here. Oh well.
There is something absurdly interesting about old things – packaging, and the like. Don’t know why. It’s a bit of a shame that nowadays our stuff comes wrapped in horrible tacky shiny plastic, festooned with garish colours and rounded lettering.
But enough! Life is good. I love modernity. It’s certainly jolly that we don’t have cigarette ads. I realize that I was in danger of emulating one of those frightful old men who wax lyrical about the good old days, and how much more civilised society was when we ate dinosaurs for afternoon tea, danced round fires in our caves, didn’t have toilet paper, and listened to old-fashioned music like… ABBA.
I’d better stop writing before I utter any more ridiculous proclamations about how much more wonderful things used to be. You know, I seriously squeezing in a diatribe about how brilliant film-based cameras were in that they encouraged people to only take a few snaps, rather than taking bazillions of pictures of everything like I did today.
Not sure how I can prevent myself. Perhaps some kind of tether or leash. Or I could get my butler to whip me with one of his plimsolls if I start to pontificate.
Whatever. You’d better get jolly well back to work, you layabout. Idleness and sloth are often the causes of poverty.