Purchasing power

My Smaller Half and I went away for the long long weekend.  It was great to have a complete change of scene and forget all the stress and tension that has been building up for the last few weeks.  The night before we left I boldly announced to my Smaller Half that I wasn't allowed to buy any stupid random stuff, as I am prone to do in times of holiday.  I've been feeling the pinch with money and decided that spending it on things I don't need is a bad idea.  As a result I only spent money on absolute necessities such second-hand cowboy boots, a vintage blue velvet jacket, and a pre-loved copy of Art Spiegelman's In The Shadow Of No Towers.

The cowboy boots are sweet.  They are Redwings, not too old, in dark brown, with a feathered pattern up the side and a mottled embossed pointy toe.  I'll sling up a photo in the next couple of days.  You'll be so impressed.  I wore them out on the town on Saturday night and I could feel the change.  I was certainly not easy to love, and even harder to hold.  And it's true that I'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold.  My preference for smoky old poolrooms and clear mountain mornings was marked, as was my liking for little warm puppies and children and girls of the night. 

The blue velvet jacket was almost accidental.  I'd been trying on an old orange velvet jacket but it wasn't working out for me.  The colour was deluxe but it was too roomy in the body and I didn't like the dual flaps up the back (a.k.a. "fart flaps").  But then my Smaller Half noticed that there was a very dark blue one hanging next to it.  I tried it on and it fitted perfectly, so I snapped it up and wore it around for the rest of the day.  Now that I have it I think I'll be able to wear it a lot, especially to those Noel Coward impersonation contests that I've been doing so well in.

Interestingly, the mannish woman that sold me the cowboy boots was most taken with the jacket.  She used it as leverage to sell me the boots, on the grounds that the battered Skechers sneakers I was wearing didn't go with the jacket at all.  She commented that I was clearly an "eclectic dresser", which I think was her way of being rude to me but not so rude that I wouldn't buy the boots.

And finally, I impulsively bought a second hand copy of the Spiegelman comic in hardback.  I was very pleased with it, as we'd heard Spiegelman discuss it at a writer's festival in New York and I've resisted the temptation to buy it brand new on multiple occasions.  It's very large, about A3 size with the cover being the famous black on black image of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre that Spiegelman designed for the cover of The New Yorker for the issue following 9/11:

I discovered that walking around with an A3 black hardback comic is a great conversation starter.  In just about every shop I went into I was asked about it.  Unfortunately I discovered that it's also a great conversation killer.  The conversations would go something like this:

Shop assistant

What's that?

PTR

It's a comic by Art Spiegelman, who wrote and drew Maus.  It's about the 9/11 attacks and his personal response to the attacks themselves and also to the subsequent political response from the Bush government.

Shop assistant

Oh.

And then they would turn away.  I think maybe they were overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of my blue velvet jacket being reflected in the sheen of my cowboy boots, or vice versa.  Or possibly they realized at that point that I was a pretty hardcore nerd and decided that talking to me was not on their things to do list.  There was one young woman who was really interested and said a whole lot of stuff about Germany and "die Zeit" that meant nothing to me, so I just said, "Oh" and turned my back.  When I read the introduction to the comic later on I found out that she must have read it herself.  What a freak.

So overall, as you can, I was most parsimonious.  The stuff that I bought was Excellent Stuff that promises to further ingrain my reputation for being a nerdy, outdoorsy, salon pianist.  And that can only be a good thing.