Oh...My...God

We listen/sort of watch stuff on Youtube while doing exercise in the morning - yes, every morning! beats the gym, costs nothing and keeps all the joints more or less functioning. Arg, getting old-er.

Anyway, yesterday, I opened up the also old laptop and demanded we be shown the Youtube choice selected for my profile. It refused as I had to re-sign in and couldn't be bothered to go and find the phone, so rather than my usual selection of climate concerned stuff, permaculture, Climate Town, Adam Something (both excellent channels!) Steven Garnett, John Oliver, documentaries on Chatbots, food production, North Korea, etc, Masterchef USA and A different Bias, and all the other channels that mysteriously appear, there was a page of rectangles containing films about mega yachts, what Taylor Swift happened to be thinking about yesterday, Smooth Summer Jazz, football, worst dating fails, scary Japanese TV shows involving eating random objects, and . . . Shopping Hauls.

I was aware of these and had gawped haplessly at a few in the past. A shopping haul for us consists of going in Noz - bizarre French shop I highlighted a few posts back - and purchasing a few daft products such as never-should-have-been developed croissants filled with pink custard or failed-to-sell chocolate hyenas. We rarely spend more than ten euros and it satisfies the lingering browsing urge from years ago when we occasionally used to go shopping for pleasure. 

I scrolled through a few steroid-fulled, pink-fonted hauls. Hauls to fill a car. Hauls to empty a bank account. Hauls to keep consumerism more than alive and kicking. I watched one in its entirety as it was oddly impossible not to, which would explain why she - glamorous, slinky-haired, size 4 - woman I can't recall the name of has many, many thousands of followers, most of which, according to the comments, appeared to be mentally fragile adolescents whose new found goal, thanks in part to her, was to become very, very rich. One of the most striking things about the video was the perpetual and exhausting excitement and associated language. Oh. My. God. These are just SO pretty. These are just So cute. These are just SO gorgeous. This is just So pretty. This is just SO cute . .  and so on.

     

I'd like to do a film parody of us going round a vide grenier (car boot sale) with the same enthusiasm but . . . well, other things to do like garden taming. Here's a written version. 

Mark: OMG, d'you see that cute little LP of Japanese C18 court music. It's SO . . . flat!  SO shiny.

Me: Cool! but look at THIS! a real galvanised chicken water feeder - SO grey! SO metaly. SO adorable, SO . . . farmy.

Mark: Get it! And, did you see! Look! OMG. He's got reconditioned secateurs! 

Me: No way! What colour? Red! Oh, SO cute! They'd go with the chainsaw . . . and that new spade - except it's green. 

Mark: OMG! No!

Me: What?

Mark. That guy there.

Me: The one with the Elvis is alive! I saw him eating chips in Cleethorpes T-shirt?

Mark: No - him! He's got a pink Art Deco tea set that would look so like amazing in our salon.

Me: OMG! It's SO cute! And . . . no way . . . LOOK! he's got a first edition of Capitalism Will Eat Itself by Barbara Cartland - you know the Mills and Boon apocalyptic sub-series.

Mark: And it's got the gold cover . . . You ask him. I'm scared. It'll be far too expensive . . . Oh no. Wait.

Me: What? WHAT?

Mark: That - there!

Me: The 1970s food processor?

Mark: No - that! Is it . . . No, it can't be . . . It's SO COOL!!!! Fender Rhodes keyboard . . . with . . . original . . .  (musician faints).

Me: Thanks. If you could just put him over there - under that tree . . . Hey! Excuse me! We're having those secateurs No . . . we have to. Look - (gets out phone). See - the chainsaw? same perfect red.

Other person: OMG. That is SO gorgeous. To die for! Jean-Paul - JEAN PAUL! viens voir . . . look at that chainsaw -did you ever see one SO red!

Other person's husband: OMD (oh, mon dieu). C'est pas possible . . . tellement joli! take the secateurs - you must. Your shed would never be complete without them . . . sacre bleu, il me faut un café.

This was actually the recent vide grenier haul: rather CUTE and v old lamp. Ancient Japanese drinks coasters, two bird shaped cake presses from the 30s I think, coffee pot and jug for the gîte, a I-went-to-Paris ashtray from the 20s, a lovely Italian vase and a dark pink floral bomber jacket. All for the price of a couple of scented candles or a mid range eyeliner.

  

NOZ

A new friend of mine - we had recently moved to the Loire area - said one Tuesday morning, hey do you fancy an orgasmic ten minutes. I think I said something like, okay, as long as it's not dangerous or doesn't cost too much. We'd driven to Saumur - the local big town where said friend had to visit a cash and carry, the mysterious ten minute thing to be undertaken first. She parked and pointed to a blue and white fronted building embellished with the word (?) NOZ. Come on you'll love it! It's total chaos.

Our local NOZ which is nicely run down and very chaotic inside - I suspect other NOZ emporiums are less so

I'm not sure if I'd term the experience exactly orgasmic, more mind-bogglingly weird and certainly satisfying to those who love finding a bargain. NOZ, or at least our local one, is a random, ramshackle shop full of stuff that is dangerously near, or just over sell buy dates; stuff that never should have made it beyond the fevered imagination of a marketing bod, and over-surplus goods in general. As appose to places like 'everything's a pound' shops or Action - a more organised and rather clinical version of NOZ - the joy is in the chaos. Failed packets of terrible desserts jostle next to bottles of tomato juice, shampoo, job lots of too-spicy-for-the French-market chili paste, wine, out of season Christmas biscuits, towels, dog snacks, vegan products that never should have pushed in this meat-hefty country; toys, bizarre Spanish cakes, giant plastic tubs of mayonnaise . . . and so on and so on.

You never know what will be in there. Sometimes we have found amazingly useful things like excellent quality tinned tomatoes, darjeeling loose tea, watercolour sketch books, and once, a very nice white wine which retailed at about ten times the NOZ price when checked online, and with a greyhound on the label -what more could we wish for!

And what about the name? Or more to the point, the bizarre emblem of a man either screaming or laughing hysterically which looks like it was most certainly a drunken lunch napkin drawing. I love it. 

- Alors, que-ce que on va faire - so, what we gonna do about this image, eh? 

 . . . What about this? 

Uh? an electrocuted posh bastard? Or is it a terrified hedgehog - with a bow tie?

Oh, I don't know but this biro's run out and the meeting's in seven minutes, s'fine . . . Waiter - two cognacs and the bill.