the joy of random

Today I allowed the ineffable jo to haul me and the Evil Landlord off to Milnerton Market for the morning, thus giving Bunny yet another lease on life¹. The Market is, in fact, the source of Bunny in the first place, being one of those car-boot-sale, random sorts of conglomerations where everyone and his eccentric auntie dig out a random selection of the contents of the family attic and attempt to hawk it to unsuspecting passers-by. The Dusty Bric-a-brac quotient is supplemented by stalls selling cheap plastic junk, cheap Chinese-made clothing, authentic Souff Effrican food, bits of second-hand hardware, plants, crockery and basically anything else you can think up. Although it's difficult to believe that anyone would actually wantonly think up in excess of three thousand white and orange ping-pong balls hand-numbered sequentially and available in egg-trays. Or a miniature carousel holding about twenty replica rapiers no longer than 5cm, apparently intended for spearing the left-over chunks of fruit out of punch. (Inevitably, my Evil Landlord bought it.) Or a disassembled set of tempura tongs. Or the massive, dusty tome containing the Hong Kong shipping registry for 1923.

I wandered happily out of the dusty, mile-long stretch of stalls with a handbag variously weighed down by five pairs of baby pliers, two mouli graters and a small, short, fat, psychedelically-painted china owl. I am proud to have sternly resisted the allure of cheap Thai woks, an antique satinwood chest of drawers, an interestingly retro brass door-fastener, and four different varieties of home-made jam, not to mention the garrulous conversation of the odd little lady who noticed me noticing Mary Stewart's Airs Above the Ground and insisted on babbling enthusiastically for ten minutes about the marvels of Lipizzaners.

But, the pleasures of surreal juxtapositions aside, I also find this sort of thing faintly sad. This stuff is someone's life, a lot of the time: it's an agglomeration of meaning, I suspect often sold out of desperate need. While often one person's junk is another's glad cry of discovery, it's also true that, possibly more frequently, one person's gallery of significance is another's trash. In the wasteful clutter of our so-called civilisation we actually have bloody little in common in how we value things.

¹ I am reliably informed that if the Bunny Threat Level doesn't start rising, Bunny will mysteriously acquire Accessories. Like a cowboy hat and lariat, and possibly chaps, although it's difficult to see where he'd put them. Brokeback Bunny. Aargh.

Bunny Threat Level: still low, but guilt-ridden and not unhopeful of future rising.