In heaven, I hope that, if they sell stuff in bags to eat on the train or at the movies, they will make sure the bags are not made out of anything that crackles and scrunches in the annoying way that crisp packets (or chip packets, as we say, [rather stupidly, I think - it seems sensible to me to differentiate between hot cooked chips and the crunchy shop bought sliced things] in Australia) do, nor will they allow sweets with crinkly wrappers or popcorn in boxes that can be crunkled around in to be taken anywhere near public places.
Also in paradise, could museum attendants not breathe down your neck and suddenly ask to see your ticket, just as you're on the point of almost grasping exactly why Rubens is so bloody marvellous.
The US does not consistently resemble paradise; however, I've never been asked for my ticket in a museum here. Once in a while they will suggest I not lean quite so close to the art, for which I don't blame them.
ReplyDeleteI think if you have your hands clasped behind your back, there is no reason for them to ask that.
ReplyDeleteIn Sydney they are now allowing patrons to take entire bottles of wine into the cinema. I sat behind a woman recently who got very drunk during the film, crinkled her chip bag, scrabbled in her popcorn box, yelled an obscenity at the screen and kicked over her wine glass as she reeled up the aisle. Pretty soon I'm going to be staying home and watching dvds instead of going out to the movies
ReplyDeleteThat was me.
DeleteTangential, but . . . do you have "Sun Chips" in Australia? Here, we have them in special biodegradable bags that are SO UNBELIEVABLY LOUD that is it uncomfortable to the ears to reach into the bag. I stopped buying them, even though I love the chips/crisps. I appreciate the "green" sentiment behind the bags, but I would sooner doom the Earth to a smothering chip-bag death than to ever tolerate that chippish cacophony again.
ReplyDeleteWhat? [breathing agitatedly] They're really loud.
Yes, I've never experienced that problem with museum attendants either. I'd always assumed that they were the result of some unemployment-reducing scheme and served no actual purpose whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteMy experience is that, in the former Soviet regime countries, there are always a few people who had found their vocation as border guards and in that kind of activity and who now spend their time listlessly wielding the very tiny power they have in rooms full of Old Masters - they are usually women. The one I encountered the other day was a woman in the Alte Pinakotheke in Munich, but my bet is she'd been born in the East. I also had a run in with one in the gas company office in Batthyany ter in Budapest a week or so ago. She looked like she used to be in charge of packs of rabid dogs in a prison for political prisoners and she was missing the thrills of yesteryear. She no longer had any notion of how to smile. Just thinking of her makes me furious.
ReplyDeleteChris - we don't, but I probably wouldn't appreciate the 'green' sentiments anyway, if we did. In fact, I think I rather hate 'green' sentiments. If someone were really 'green', I reckon they would never buy anything in any kind of packaging and would be content to live only on the food that had been grown in the area close enough to involve absolutely no need for any kind of transportation or packaging. My idea is only to ever buy food that I really like and want to eat. That also ends up generally being mostly unpackaged. There is such a big demand for 'organic' and all that stuff in the UK and also to some extent in Australia, but my impression is that places like Budapest where the population doesn't have the money for that kind of stuff actually have a better, fresher, more organic, less packaged, less corporate controlled food supply, without all the environmental hooplah. The vital ingredient is the lack of involvement of huge
ReplyDeletesupermarkets - although Tesco (grrrrrrrrrrrrr, I do not like Tesco, because they are such suffocaters of competitors) is encroaching quite a lot. Gosh, what a long ramble. Props hobby horse in corner. Sits down. Shuts up.