"When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong think or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn't matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move." 

Diane Ackerman, from A Natural History of the Senses.

Idiocies

When people I knew started being murdered in Jonannesburg, then it became obvious that that country had a problem. Now that people I know, indeed members of my family, are being subjected to the modern idiocy of imposed welfare, bizarrely justified by the incompetently managed people dispensing it, then I know that we have a problem

So:

1. Mrs Marrian goes into Peter Jones, a John Lewis Partnership department store, to buy a pair of kitchen scissors. She is asked for ID. She asks why ID is necessary and the assistant replies "You need to be over 18 to buy a pair of kitchen scissors". Although I will be the first to take the credit for the fact that Mrs Marrian does not look her age, she nevertheless possesses two daughters in their late 20s and it really shouldn't be necessary for her to have to demonstrate that fact before an employee at a John Lewis store will condescend to serve her
    
2. Deputy daughter's friend (let us call her Mary) goes to Waitrose, a John Lewis supermarket, to buy some champagne to celebrate the birthday of one of her school friends (let us call her Jane). She is 26, as are all the young women at the dinner because they were all at school together. She is asked for ID, which she doesn't have because she doesn't drive and prefers not to carry her passport. Whatever training John Lewis employees get in how to recognize some of the more obvious differences between teenagers and those in their mid 20s, it clearly hasn't made an impression on this particular cashier who refuses to believe that Mary might be anything other than under 18. Deputy daughter and Jane are summoned as reinforcements. Both carry ID and both have to produce it, a requirement as bizarre as it is idiotic given that even Waitrose has not yet come up with a way for two people to buy the same bottle of champagne at the same time. Now that it has been established that two of the triumvirate are 26 years old, and that one of the two, will buy the champagne, the cashier still refuses to sell it saying:
   
   "But, she's with you"
   "She's 26"
   "But she doesn't have ID"
   "It's not illegal (yet) to walk the streets without ID. She's 26"
   "But, you might give her some"
   "We definitely intend to give her some. That is the purpose of buying it. She's 26. Even if she were under 18, it would not be illegal for her to drink champagne in a private home"
   "I can't serve you because she's with you"
   
   There's a hole in my bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry...
   
   Astonishingly, the manager, although he allowed the purchase, would not resile from the cashier's attitude, which worries me because while the cashier might have been badly trained and badly managed, one wonders at the competence of those managing the store managers