Freeze · 25 November 2001
So it’s after hearing about the bright future of broadband in France, and we’re shopping, right, we’re out to shop, and we’re thinking kitchen stuff, and Herself suggests we should look in one of those tchotchke shops full of Alessi kettles and novelty fridge magnets and quite expensive handmade kitsch – the sort of retail enterprise inevitably co-run by an enterprising young gay man and a matronly woman with a penchant for “fun” hairdos – and we’re going around poking and turning martini platters over and I’m feeling vague disgust at all this twee lifestyle porn of no real function other than to be seen in homes, and Herself says she’s going upstairs to look at the bathroom stuff.
(Here you need to understand that when left alone surrounded by French people I tend toward slight moments of panic that I’ll be required to communicate, and without a comely bilingual girlfriend to rely upon it’ll likely be clumsy and wrong and embarrassing &c.)
So I’m there among the retail staff and, having shaken off the linguistic fear, I continue regarding the yuppie dreck with a bemused eye and in particular this really rather elaborate multi-limbed display of sculptures of domestic scenes welded entirely from the spare parts of heavy machinery, and I touch one of them – just brush it with my fingertip – and, on the other side of the display, one of the sculptures falls off and destroys several gaily-coloured glass ashtrays arranged below.
Remarkable what can run through one’s mind in the time it takes such a piece to leave its perch and connect with its destination.
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