A Woman’s Work Is Never Done

The wonderfulness that is New London Pharmacy, East 23rd St. Big shout out to Ony.

Cake of splendour at Empire Cakes, 8th Avenue

Beautiful rings by Rhea Kulcsar at the Artisan market next to Downtown branch of Dean & DeLuca. That mother of pearl ring is boss.

Have you ever made and poured out 11 litres of shower gel? No? Well, I don’t advise it. How exhausted am I? Let me count the ways… or rather, let’s not. Let me just say that yet again, I fully understand why most people do not start their own businesses. I could write a 450 page Nordic saga on my search for blasted lip balm containers that actually conform to the dimensions advertised so that the labels will actually fit on properly. Ye gods and little fishes, it’s enough to make me turn to my duty-free Jack Daniels. If only I had time to embrace a drinking problem; sadly I’m too busy and besides the house is filled with boxes of products and packaging in readiness for the Country Living Fair in two weeks. I’m lucky if I can get to the kitchen to get something to eat.
If I tell you that a stockist sent me a message saying they’d sold all the stuff and needed more stock, and that my heart sank instantly at the thought of having to sort out making more creams before I slapped myself around a couple of times and cried out, “it’s sold out!”, that should give you an idea of the volume of work involved. That glass was definitely half-empty for a few seconds there which is amazing as I’m known for being a crazed optimist. I’m usually like the knight in ‘Monty Python & The Holy Grail’: “This? It’s only a flesh wound!” Top film 🙂

Talking about crazy half-full-glass optimism, there has been a lot of hoo-ha about Comic Relief allegedly being a party political broadcast for Jeremy Corbyn this year. The Tories are throwing their dummies out of the pram because one of the charities FareShare, says 1 in 8 people in Britain go hungry every day, rough estimate, 8 million people. Not so!, say the indignant Tories. A report by the UN says only 2.2 million in the UK are ‘severely food insecure’ Don’t you just love that phrase – food insecure. It’s known as starving to you and me. Oh well, that’s a figure to be proud of. 2.2 million people, for the love of God. This is the world’s 5th largest economy, no one should be going hungry! And they wonder why the public hate them. Only a supremely uncaring idiot with zero compassion or self-awareness thinks that’s a defence worth fielding. And no, I’m not a Corbynista, I think he’s an idiot, same as all the others. However, I suspect he may very well be an idiot who may occasionally let principle stand in the way of expediency once in a while, i.e an actual real human being. I certainly warm to his fascination with manhole covers, as arcane an interest as any I’ve ever come across 🙂

In other news, did you know that the Americans have stopped all that palaver with tiny bags and 100ml bottles? Yep, not a single one to be seen at JFK. You can bet the airport nazis here will still try to enforce it with their dying breath. I was sure it was a load of nonsense from the first time I went to Italy and saw them giving out bag-for-life size clear bags which were treated with total indifference by the luggage monitors. At JFK, they’re making everyone go through those super-invasive X-ray machines; they’ve stopped using the metal detectors altogether. So what I want to know is this: have terrorists stopped trying to smuggle explosives aboard in 20 litre jerrycans and have taken to swallowing them drug-mule style? I have nothing to declare but my spleen. Every day in every way, the war on terror makes less and less sense.
Well, enough of this madness, back to work. I leave you with timely words from Bertolt Brecht in his poem ‘Die Lösung’ (The Solution), written after the East Berlin uprising in 1953:

After the uprising of June 17th
The Secretary of the Authors’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Which said that the people
Had forfeited the government’s confidence
And could only win it back
By redoubled labour. Wouldn’t it
Be simpler in that case if the government
Dissolved the people and
Elected another?

Coming soon to a ‘democracy’ near you. Have a wonderful week.