Jewellery
I've always longed for someone to give me a diamond necklace.
Then I could flog it and buy a narrowboat instead.
I've never seen the point in expensive jewellery. If you're young and beautiful and clear-skinned, then you don't need it - you look good in anything. If you're old and wrinkly, then all that expensive jewellery says to the world is "Look, I'm rich! Old, but rich!" It's not a message I'd be too keen on giving out.
In what I refer to as my "jewellery box" - hah! - there are a variety of things, but most of them wouldn't generally be classed as jewellery.
There's my grandmother's wedding ring: I think it's the only thing there that's made of gold and, of course, it's precious to me just because it was hers. She was the Communist's mother: she travelled here from Lithuania at the age of fourteen, speaking no English, and she had the large hands of a Russian peasant: the ring is far too big for me - and my hands are by no means delicate.
There's a cheap silver ring that I wore all the time when I was a student and it's somehow a vivid reminder of my student days. There's an amber brooch that the Communist brought back for me from his one proud trip to the Soviet Union.
But that's it for anything that could be called "jewellery". There are lots of badges: POCKET THEATRE, says one that's full of good memories. UP THE CUT ("the cut" means "the canal".) I'M A CANALOHOLIC (oh dear). A few nuclear disarmament badges: AGEING HIPPIES AGAINST THE BOMB, and CLOUSEAU FANS SAY THERE IS NO REUM FOR THE BEUMB.
My favourite badge is there: it is round and blue with a short poem by Brian Patten. He was one of the Liverpool Poets in the 1960s, with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, and we shared a hall with him and with Roger McGough at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the mid-Seventies. Brian Patten was very introverted on stage, and very jolly off it, I remember: Roger McGough was entirely the opposite.
Here's the poem:
I'd rather my sins were black
Than my poems were read
And obscurely living
Than famously dead.
Jewellery that you can read is definitely more interesting than jewellery that just twinkles at you.
Then I could flog it and buy a narrowboat instead.
I've never seen the point in expensive jewellery. If you're young and beautiful and clear-skinned, then you don't need it - you look good in anything. If you're old and wrinkly, then all that expensive jewellery says to the world is "Look, I'm rich! Old, but rich!" It's not a message I'd be too keen on giving out.
In what I refer to as my "jewellery box" - hah! - there are a variety of things, but most of them wouldn't generally be classed as jewellery.
There's my grandmother's wedding ring: I think it's the only thing there that's made of gold and, of course, it's precious to me just because it was hers. She was the Communist's mother: she travelled here from Lithuania at the age of fourteen, speaking no English, and she had the large hands of a Russian peasant: the ring is far too big for me - and my hands are by no means delicate.
There's a cheap silver ring that I wore all the time when I was a student and it's somehow a vivid reminder of my student days. There's an amber brooch that the Communist brought back for me from his one proud trip to the Soviet Union.
But that's it for anything that could be called "jewellery". There are lots of badges: POCKET THEATRE, says one that's full of good memories. UP THE CUT ("the cut" means "the canal".) I'M A CANALOHOLIC (oh dear). A few nuclear disarmament badges: AGEING HIPPIES AGAINST THE BOMB, and CLOUSEAU FANS SAY THERE IS NO REUM FOR THE BEUMB.
My favourite badge is there: it is round and blue with a short poem by Brian Patten. He was one of the Liverpool Poets in the 1960s, with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, and we shared a hall with him and with Roger McGough at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the mid-Seventies. Brian Patten was very introverted on stage, and very jolly off it, I remember: Roger McGough was entirely the opposite.
Here's the poem:
I'd rather my sins were black
Than my poems were read
And obscurely living
Than famously dead.
Jewellery that you can read is definitely more interesting than jewellery that just twinkles at you.
posted by Daphne at 9:01 pm
4 Comments:
I have a fair bit of "jewellery" which is neither readable nor twinkly. But I dolike visual art, and jewellery is predominantly visual art, to me.
The main message it sends out, I suspect, is "I'm a dykey hippie" or similar.
I wore a badge for years that said 'cleverly disguised as a responsible adult' until I decided that the disguise seemed to be working and the badge was blowing my cover... Now I like 'I'm too good for this'. It's ambiguous enough that 'this' can apply to pretty much anything... As a student, I liked 'I majored in Liberal Arts, will that be for here or to go?'...I thought it was ironic, somehow. After my first food-service job I got rid of it, and fast!
I like the kind of jewellery that's visual art - - and not the kind that's showing off wealth! (That sounds very pompous I know, sorry). Love your badges, especially "I majored in Liberal Arts, will that be for here or to go?" Great.
I have a few badges; "Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth, Deal with it" and "I AM AT WORK" are my current favourites.
Oh, and "I've survived damn near EVERYTHING" is good too.
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