Sunday 8 June 2008

Getting rural at the museum


We visited the Museum of English Rural Life on Saturday as there was a special event with people doing demonstrations of old-timey crafts, music, etc. And peppered throughout the museum on various displays were stuffed toy rats, an homage to the lovely dark corners, grassy areas and rubbish bins of Reading. One supposes. There was even a game in the courtyard called Smack a Rat or some such in which darling tykes could take a bat and try to smack a toy rat dropped down a tube by a volunteer. Ah, a glimpse of the good old days!

But besides an odd preoccupation with rats, the museum was a perfectly nice example of a small museum preserving remnants of a past way of life, with old farm equipment, milk bottles, wagons, and homespun clothing. They even had the obligatory gift shop, complete with bookmarks made of sheep poo -- the perfect gift for that recycling fanatic on your Christmas list!

Wednesday 4 June 2008

Porn at Poundland

No, I'm not talking about some adults-only club with a graphic name -- Poundland is a store where everything costs £1, kind of like The Dollar Tree in the U.S., except with everything costing twice as much (£1 = $2).

This morning I found shelves overloaded with one-pound porn DVDs, bearing such titles as Suburban Wives 1 and Girls in Uniform 2. But I just noticed I got Suburban Wives 1 *Volume 2*. Oh no! Will the story still make sense if we didn't see Volume 1 first? Ditto with the other DVD, as it's part 2, Volume 5. They also had Suburban Wives sequels through to No. 7. Hubby wondered if they manage to carry the characters' storylines successfully through to the end. Hmm, I'm guessing there are no storylines.

I arrived home to tell my hubby what a good wife I am. Yes, I was out spending his money. But hey, I also bought him porn. At Poundland. You want to hand some surly cashier a pile of cheapo porn? Ok, maybe some of you do that regularly anyway. But in my case, that shows love, man. And I wasn't really embarrassed; you may recall me blogging about how this store sold vibrating stuffed penises with smiling faces around Valentines' Day, in among all the other fare you normally see at a dollar store (or 2-dollar store, in this case). So I think the cashiers have seen it all. And after we watch these films, I will have, too.