Thursday, March 04, 2010

soldiers, landmarks, tools
















There is something about these bottles which reminds me of soldiers - perhaps their bland, upright stance. Then, they are milk bottles. There was a time when glass milk bottles were universal. The milkman delivered them daily, left them on your doorstep and collected the empty bottles. Nowadays, at least in towns, milk comes in cartons or plastic bottles and is sold by supermarkets and convenience stores. It used to be delivered with an inch or more of cream on the top, which you could pour off if you wanted. Nowadays, you are offered, as an alternative to full cream milk, half skimmed milk and skimmed milk. The milk, which still has some cream in it,  is as far as I can tell homogenised ie shaken vigorously by a machine so that the cream is permanently mixed with the rest of the milk. None of this concerns me much as I do not like milk except in tea, but it is amusing to note changes to our way of life, which creep up on us, without being noticed.

Since I have been photographing pieces of rubbish left on the streets, I have begun to notice certain items - a disintegrating piece of food, a label, a button, a can or carton, which remains in place for several days before the street cleaners arrive. What I would in the past have ignored have become temporary landmarks, friends, points of reference. It is a sort of natural history of unnatural things.

In the window of a shop in the High Street, I note kitchen tools, which strike me as new and largely unnecessary, but in the way that gadgets appeal, are still attractive to a magpie personality like mine. They are, I suppose,  reflections of the culinary fashions, which preoccupy  some of us nowadays. There is a : wok skimmer, a citrus reamer, a citrus zester, a Parmesan mill and a pizza cutter. I am glad to say that I can do without all of them.

Please note that Lucy Kempton has answered the question, which I put to her in Compasses with a delightful  new poem, which has already sparked interest and dialogue.
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1 comment:

Roderick Robinson said...

"reminds me of soldiers" - but never of airmen.

Didn't realise we had a shared phobia - milk.