Sainsburys have posted signs asking customers not to read the newspapers and magazines during busy periods because it prevents other customers from getting their shopping. I take this as carte blanche to read the newspapers and magazines during quiet periods. Looking at them, though, I am not sure I want to.
They are all dominated by that programme "I'm a Magazine Editor get me an easy-to-use Press Release." Maybe I'm eavesdropping on all the wrong conversations, but despite blanket coverage in the mass and not-so-mass media, I have heard, or overheard, not one person discussing the programme. Just because the production company is savvy enough to release salacious press notices by the ton doesn't mean it's the beat on the street. Yet Heat Magazine has actually produced a 'Jungle Special'.
I emerged and was stringing a few thoughts together when I heard a voice saying "Big Issue." I didn't react. The voice said, "I'm talking to you," and continued, "That's very rude, you know."
It's not, I thought.
Just because you are selling a worthy magazine (dull, but worthy) doesn't make you any different from any one of the other people who seek my attention on the street. I am under no moral obligation to respond. It would have been rude if I had turned round and said something, well, rude. But, you know, you invaded my thought-space. I may have had heavy matters preoccupying me. I might have been hard-of-hearing. Lacking in compassion for a homeless person struggling to make an honest living, I was. But rude, no.
I surveyed the shop windows along the street. All of them decked out in Valentine's Day tat. Valentine's Day is not romantic. It is commercialised clich�. Unimaginative and robotic. Unspontaneous and obedient. Sheeplike and gullible.
Romance is totally different place.
