Bench mark

There's something about these bags which is really quite lovely. Buy one here. Alternatively, perhaps I am going mad and I just like them because the way that they're displayed is reminding me of the old wooden bench in my mum's garden, on which I used to sit, cup of tea in hand, looking out over green lawns (belonging not to my family but to the laird, a nasty wee nyaff of about my age called Francis) in the sunshine. I always used to say, rather pompously, "nostalgia is the enemy of the future", but it comes out in funny ways.

Party fears too

I've been having a wonderful holiday here, hence no posting for aeons; getting an almost-but-not-quite tan (factor 50, on account of my huge collection of moles, does seem to prevent the slightest hint of having been on holiday from getting to my appearance), learning to swim under water, and paddling a lumbering two-person canoe which was shaped like, and handled as heavily as, a child's bathtub (for the record, we broke the all-comers fastest time by paddling round the island in 50 minutes). I think I finally began to let go of thoughts of work by about day 5. As I surfaced in the pool in the sunshine, the very picture of bourgeois contentment, a topic for my blog suggested itself: and not just another essay on the futility of blogging.

The topic is: things I will never tell anyone. Though this seems rather unpromising as subject-matter, since I'm not telling anyone, it's got possibilities.

For example, I will never tell anyone what I, as a gauche, dyed-black-haired 18 year old said to Billy Mackenzie in a nightclub in Edinburgh (called, for what it's worth, The Kangaroo Klub).

Like the old Top Tip from Viz ("Pensioners! If you're feeling the cold this winter, just think of Neil Kinnock, at the triumphalist Labour Party rally of 1992 [just prior to the election, which they lost] shouting 'Comrades! Well all right! Well all right! Well all right!' - You'll flush from head to toe with embarrassment - no need for costly heating!") this particular memory could heat Hong Kong.

Just shoe me

Walking around Lane Crawford today, in a more than usually bad mood having been ignored by one blank-eyed shop assistant too many, I experienced the nadir of the shopping experience TM when I idly picked up a particularly vertiginous shoe from a display which turned out to have been barely holding itself together until I came along. In a domino-style collapse worth of Heath Robinson, my act of lifting the shoe (the one pictured above, as it happens) from its tiny metal platform was enough to send at least five ludicrously expensive pairs crashing to the floor along with the metal plates they were sitting on.

The nearest shop assistant looked around with barely concealed disdain at the clanging sound, as did the overdressed tai tai customer she was fawning over, and after picking up the shoes and putting the whole edifice back together as best as I could (and on reflection, if only I had had the chutzpah to sail away nonchalantly!) I hastily exited out of the nearest side door, blushing horribly. Yes, this sort of thing happens not only in American sitcoms, where it is completely unfunny, but on my Sunday afternoon, where ditto.

Smugby

My favourite time of year (hardly): the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens. A time when Hong Kong fills up to the brim with self-righteous expats convinced that their favourite sport (drinking all day in the sun) is everyone's favourite, heart-warming. just-can't-help-yourself activity. Why do I hate the Rugby Sevens? Here are a few random reasons: 1) I can't stand having to justify why I'm not going. Again and again. 2) It's a time when poeple think it's really cool to dress up as cowgirls. All ten of you and your friends, lassoos and all. Or is it angels? Or werewolves? 3) What do the Chinese think of us? Yes, we're all fat, pie-eating, drunken bastards. Aren't we? 4) Call me an inverted snob (I'm an inverted snob), but rugby originated at Rugby. 5) England won this year.