Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Cost of Things

Last night in my local supermarket I paid $7.30 for three bananas.

Why? you moron, I hear you cry, and, Reader, you have a point. I'm not sure why. But they are three perfect bananas, and unlike any banana I have ever bought in my whole life before, they can be absolutely 100% certain that I will eat them at the peak of their perfection, rather than end up using them for banana bread or compost. I may be trying to teach myself some kind of lesson about waste.

Over at Sarsaparilla, however, someone has just posted a comment about a second-hand bookshop that was (during its closing-down sale; wouldn't you know) selling classic paperbacks for 70c. And I have been musing on whether the consumption of three perfect bananas, as quality of experience goes, could in any way be stacked up against reading, oh, say, Middlemarch, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, The Waves, Ulysses, Catch-22, and half -- the Peace half -- of War and Peace.

4 comments:

Zoe said...

That would depend on how hungry you were.

Weather Pixie is looking very jaunty with her ibook today.

Ampersand Duck said...

Definitely yes, especially if you eat them with a heightened sense of their worth and flavour.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Yes, it's all contextual. I am reminded of real-estate agents in Melbuorne who used to dodge my pleas for a ballpark estimate of house value so I wouldn't waste my time trundling round to inspections in the rain, replying evasively 'This house is worth whatever someone will pay for it.' And so it is with narnas, I now find.

Zoe, here at 3.39 pm Adelaide time, Pixie is wearing a red cheongsam: it's 22 degrees, and a bit blowy. I am going now outside to plant a rose, slosh a lot of Charlie Carp everywhere and manufacture a bit of Vitamin D.

FXH said...

I hope you did the banana jokes. I only know two, both on the same theme.

"I'll have two bananas please"

"OK missus. Will I put them on the laybuy"?

or

" $10 worth of bananas please"

" C'mon - why not lash out a get a whole one"