Everyone's doing it

[ladyofastolat]

I've just caught up with a programme on last year's retail trends, a subject which I find very interesting, even though almost all of the trends have entirely passed me by. I found the programme simultaneously very interesting and very annoying, largely for its habit of making sweeping statements about how "we were ALL" doing something or other, when the figures quoted revealed that although there was indeed a note-worthy increase on last year, it was still very much a minority thing, no matter how much trendy media types might have written about it. They were very fond of saying that "a staggering £x million" was spent on such and such, when a quick bit of mental arithmetic on the likely price of the product and the adult population of the country revealed that this was actually a fairly unimpressive number. Sometimes they even made this easy for us. After one little piece about how "we were ALL" buying something or other, some trendy media type said that "it became more a case of who DIDN'T have one than who did." Yes, revealed the presenter, by the end of the year a staggering one household in 60 had one of these things. I expect there are things sneered at by the media as sad minority interests that are actually indulged in by individuals in more households than that.

We also had a use of one of the Standard Units of Measurement - in this case, the Olympic Swimming Pool. Last year, due to a massive explosion of beards that I had remained completely unaware of, enough beard trimmers were sold to fill three Olympic swimming pools. I never find the Olympic swimming pool / football pitch / London bus school of measurement remotely impressive. To me, it turns "Big Number!" into "something you can fit into a fairly small patch of ground that can be seen by one person without them even moving." "Big Number!" sounds impressive - at least if you don't think about it, and realise that it works out as only one per sixty households. Something that can fit under one roof sounds far less impressive to me, even if the roof is a big one, and each thing is very small.

As for me, the programme revealed that I have indulged in precisely two of this year's retail trends. Despite not being a huge fan of fizzy drinks - although I tolerate them more than I used to - I've bought Prosecco, since they kept plying us with free Prosecco when we were in Sorrento, and ever since then, the drink has reminded me of that holiday. I also have an adult colouring book. It's a Game of Thrones one, which I got for Christmas. I had no idea that such things promoted mindfulness! I've heard of mindfulness, but never really known what it was, or bothered to find out. I had no idea that when I spent quite a ridiculous amount of time colouring in a joust scene the other day that I was indulging in mindfulness. I thought I was just colouring in a picture.

I still have no Christmas jumper.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I believe that mindfulness is something one can do when colouring, but is not intrinsic to the process. As, for example, I could be using the powerful computer in front of me to solve Mighty Problems of Existence (if I knew how to do that, which tragically I do not), but in fact, I am using it to type livejournal comments. :-D

Re the staggering expenditure on beard trimmers, perhaps if you consider poor Ms Trim the Beard Trimmer Manufacturer, struggling to feed her huge bearded brood after being cruelly deserted by Mr Trim, seduced away om 2012 by the owner of a small craft brewery just outside Nottingham, you could summon up a greater feeling of awe at the amazing results achieved in 2015?

Probably Ms Trim does not use her computer for random frivolous LJ comments because she is using every inch of its processing power on designing new and better hair shortening apparatus. It sounds stressful. I hope she has a colouring book.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Presumably Ms Trim is a whizz at marketing on social media, which is how she managed to persuade so many people to rush out and buy a beard trimmer, then descend as a flash mob on the nearest Olympic swimming pool to ritually cast it into the waters. (Where, I sincerely hope, at least one of them was claimed by a mystical hand that rose up, clad in white samite, and bore it away to the magical depths.)