An
advert from a glossy magazine rode into the hamlet last week!
I was in the kitchen
when I was aware they had arrived, riding bicycles up the road from the gîte,
obviously having come in the back way, but their sturdy town bicycles were
obviously up for it, even if they didn’t seem particularly prepared for a
little cross country cycling.
When I looked out of
the window I was greeted by one of those strange, obviously highly staged,
glossy magazine adverts that often leave you fumbling around for what is actually
being advertised. Now I should explain
here, that I am not an avid reader of such magazines, a cover price of £4-00 or
more is enough of a reason to leave them on the shelf. But, I am going to name drop here, as some
months ago, some visitors wanting something to read and pass the time on the
ferry had purchased two magazines (Red and Harper’s Bazaar) for a bargain price
considerable less than the £8-10 it would have cost them if they had selected
them individually. The disadvantage was
that as they were being sold as a multi pack they were tightly sealed in a
plastic bag, which I’m sure has a more technical or proper name when used to
wrap such high brow tomes! Well, a quick
glance and you find adverts for Louis Vuitton, Dior, Giorgio Armani, Gucci,
Chanel and many more maybe even including a devil wearing Prada, which simply
consist of pictures (and no I haven’t forgotten the one outside the kitchen,
I’ll be back there eventually!) and few prices or even product
information. Not mixing in such circles,
there are some adverts that I actually couldn’t tell you what they are
advertising – notably one that could be clothes (his or hers), perfume (his or
hers) or a high class house of ill repute in New York!
Taking one of the
magazines there are 37 pages of these adverts before the Contents page, then
another 6 pages of adverts, before
the second part of the contents, 7 more pages of adverts before part 3 of the
Contents, 18 pages of adverts before a half page of publishing credits, 11
pages of adverts before a second half page of publishing credits. Now, I could apologise here for going on, but
I won’t, as it continues, and just to recap so far – 80 pages of adverts to 4 ½
of admin pages! So out of sheer
curiosity, and yes I hear you saying that I must have too much time on my
hands, but I have been working hard today landscaping the garden, mending the
caravan, putting in a window frame and more, so I need some relaxation time
particularly as the nights are beginning to close in. But, thinking about it I’m not sure if getting
so worked up about a scandalous waste of paper, is that relaxing, but as they
say – I’ve started so I’ll finish – 12 before 2 pages of editors letter, 4
before 2 pages telling you about Contributors, 8 before a couple of pages
telling you what they are contributing, 12 before the first 2 page contribution
and maybe things are looking up, only 1 before the next contribution of 1
page. Sadly I’m not half way through yet
so I’m going to précis – in the remainder of the magazine there are 164 pages
of adverts and fashion pictures to 74 pages of “articles” many of which are
actually glorified adverts for must have accessories such as a handbag at
£2,655, a coat for about (!) £1,780, a pair of shoes at £935 and a mid length
leather skirt for £709, you get the drift.
A final tally, before I
step off my soap box from which I feel a little like Russell Brand last week,
when making an acceptance speech for the GQ “oracle award” and making some
typically outrageous joke, he said “I could feel the room dividing as I
spoke. I could hear the laughter of some
and louder still silence of others!! So,
the adverts have it:
281
½ to 87 ½ (roughly!)
Wow, can that be value
for money as well as environmentally friendly?
But don’t worry, I’m not about to peruse the other magazine in the same
scintillating way, even though the cover tantalisingly tells me that somewhere
amongst the adverts is an article entitled: Your NEW SEASON IN 50 ... shoes
from £45 ... bags from £38 ... jewellery from £12 (plus, the no-agony shoes you
won’t want to take off)!
But, enough, back
outside my kitchen window, one sunny afternoon last week! There were three models, sorry cyclists, who
having come up the hill from the gîte were confronted with two routes: straight
on through the farm yard or left onto the road at the top of the hamlet. So, they slipped off their solid Parisian
town bikes, in sober colours with wicker handlebar baskets with leather
accessories, into a choreographed random pose, the man off his saddle, both
feet on the ground astride his machine, facing his older teenage son (he had
the same angular, expressionless, bland and possibly powdered face as the man,
so I’m only guessing they were related) preferring to stay sitting on the
saddle with one foot on the ground and the bike at a jaunty angle to the road
and the other younger teenage child, of similar bland features and
indeterminate sex, jumping off completely and holding the handle bars and front
wheel at an acute angle to the rest of the bike!
You could almost hear
the camera shutter as the photographer spun around them getting the various
countrified backdrops, rustic open fronted, large beamed woodstore, rusty
corrugated iron open fronted hanger with old green and red tractor, of a
vintage that makes it attractive in a shabby chic sort of way, brown shuttered
farm house or own attractive cottage with our smart troène couleur (privet
coloured) shutters and now with a pair of new English five barred gates, a new
freshly painted front wall with simple, but chic posts connected with a twisted
rope. Quite a dilemma for the
photographer, who if thinking about some of the previously mentioned adverts,
might actually have preferred our previous bent, twisted and broken green
plastic coated fence of small squares held together by a multitude of bits of
wire with bent nails and rusty staples holding it to posts of various sizes and
shapes, uniform if only in the bright green, a more vivid shape of British
Racing Green than that used by Stirling Moss and his ilk, that was badly
painted over everything including the walls and the road! This run down, downright dilapidated
background might have been just what he was looking for to show of the plain
and rather bland models he had before him in a tableau of sophistication!
Then, there were the
clothes, hanging somewhat limply from the waist less stick like models, the
rather dull “brightly” coloured hooped tops, hard to describe but one was a
sort of yucky green, like the edges of a bright green paint pot where a dirty
brush with a vestiges of grey and dirty yellow had been mixed in, with off
white, gone off cream colour for the other stripes. I remember thinking that jumpers on such a
warm sunny day really weren’t needed, but for the sake of art, or should that be
profit, needs must; and they were useful in covering over the waists of the
earthy coloured trousers, that clung to the narrow legs of the wearers. I have already mentioned that the wearers
were rather waist less, so the jumpers probably also covered up the large
safety pins or pieces of cord needed to stop the trousers from simply sliding
down over where the hips should have been.
The shoes, or rather
low slip on boots with large elasticated sides, as by now I’m sure you will be
imagining, were totally unsuitable, polished brown leather, of various shades
with pointy toes, certain to catch the odd rock when doing all terrain
cycling. But then again a pair of tatty
trainers, or indeed state of the art cycling shoes just wouldn’t have done it!
Cycle helmets were
nowhere apparent, but then the sort of clients that this advert would have been
aimed at, would no doubt be too concerned about the helmet flattening the
carefully coiffured hair, which here resembled the thatch on a old-fashioned
hayrick, long, lank and lifeless over the eaves, or in this case the ears! Finished off by a long brushed over fringe,
dangerously at least for cycling, obscuring at least half of one eye, and
miraculously still in place after the last mile of bumpy farm track! Perhaps I’d failed to see the mobile makeup
unit parked behind the gîte, which had just applied the half can of hair
lacquer needed for such a permanent hold, as well as drying off any
perspiration or should that be glow, for such refined personages, before applying
the powder to make the already expressionless and bland faces, pale and
unhealthy looking, despite the bicycles seemingly pointing towards an active,
hale and hearty lifestyle.
The tableau froze like
this for a few moments, not a word appearing to be said about the dilemma of
which way to go, and as quickly as they came they left. Surprisingly without the trailing entourage
of makeup unit, cameraman, minder, fixer and whatever else models for such
exclusive goods (bikes, clothes, shoes,
wicker baskets, makeup, underwear [perhaps one corner of a jumper had cunningly
risen up to reveal a monogrammed waistband], celebrity barber, or maybe I’d
missed the designer watch, fashionable but functional for the outdoor sort –
able to compute speed, distance travelled, distance left, gradient, time for
fluid intake and with new improved, at plenty of extra cost, function where the
carefully crafted watch face flips open to reveal a small fan, for emergency
use should you break into a sweat and the makeup start running – who knows),
might have a use for!
For a fleetingly brief
glossy moment, a little culture and a little of how the other half live
fluttered through the hamlet, before it returned to its quiet, sleepy,
peaceful, tranquil, wonderful norm! The
glitzy catwalks, crowded trains, stately homes, litter strewn back alleys or
deserted windswept station platforms of New York, Paris and Rome thankfully a
million miles away. Give me my long
baggy shorts, sweaty out of shape tee shirt, floppy straw hat and down at heel
espadrilles any day, but don’t tell the ad men from Dolce & Gabbana or
Tommy Hilfiger, I’m not looking for another career, and the neighbours probably
wouldn’t like all the fuss!!
