There is a picture book we used to have about a small boy being sent to the shops to buy some things for his mother. As the boy walks along, he tries to recall the various things his mother has asked for.
"Six farm eggs, a pound of pears, a cake for tea - and don't forget the bacon", she tells him at the beginning, but these items all get garbled, except, so far as I remember, the bit about the bacon.
Perhaps it was the reading of this text over and over again that gave me an interest in shopping lists. Certainly I have a habit of picking up any I see - and you'd be surprised how many one does see, dropped in car parks, forgotten on cafe chairs, or simply fallen from pockets.
Sometimes people incorporate their ideas for a whole week of meals on their list, with notes of who will be attending and which day and what time. I love these lists most, because they provide a glimpse into someone else's life, (without wishing to sound extremely creepy, I get the same pleasure from walking along streets after dark and seeing lit interiors where people are talking or reading, watching television, talking on the telephone, working or preparing meals).
I sometimes wonder whether the lists where people write down what exactly they are planning to cook and who will eat it could, with the application of time and a bit of imagination, provide the basis of a series of short stories or perhaps a novel, (I have a memory of a rather brilliant story by Faye Weldon, made entirely from lists - but that is not quite the same as what I have in mind).
Although the list I picked up this morning has nothing to do with meals - at least I hope not - I definitely think that it could be worked up by some clever person into a piece of fantasy literature, perhaps a tale of suburban witchcraft. It is certainly the most exotic list that I've discovered thus far:
Red jasper
Carnelian
(Ruby bloodstone
Chalcedony)
I don't know why, given that nothing on this list is mentioned in the play, but an image of a heath and a cauldron and three wild female figures comes to mind. I just hope the other members of the trio have their own lists and one of them remembers to bring along some fenny snake and tongue of dog.
When I was young, we went one weekend day in late summer or early fall to the annual picnic of NOGS, the Northern Ohio Geological Society. There would be an auction, at which for fifty cents or less one might acquire a geode or a bit of petrified wood, etc. I still regret the gypsum crystals that I might have had, but that I dropped out of the bidding for around twenty-five cents.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the writer was heading to some such event.
Regret is my least favourite emotion and so I hope, if they were doing as you suggest, that they were a braver bidder than your youthful self.
ReplyDelete