DELIGHT Two: SHOPPING in small towns and villages

 

photo by Britta Hügel 

No travels to little towns and villages at the (long) moment, AND the shops are closed everywhere in Germany. 

The only living person a lot of people nowadays see at all is the Amazon delivery man. Or the postman - which makes me think of the time when little shops in villages were also the post office... 

But I agree with Mr. J.B.Priestly: shopping in small towns and villages is fun and a delight. 

"We begin (to shop) as small children clutching our pennies and staring over the counter in a sweet agony of indecision." 

Oh yes: I remember Mr. Meissner, the chemist's, just over the street - you could go there with 1 Pfennig (!) in your little hand and he would take down an enormous tin can, open it (ahh - that heavenly smell!) - and took out one heaped teaspoon of black sharp salty rhombic salmis - mmmmhhhh! 

"We who begin to buy only when we are at the mercy of our instinctive drives do not want a whole floor of neckties or saucepans, with lifts to take us to cushions or tobacco. It is when shaving brushes and cheese, toffee and potato peelers, liver pills and socks, are heaped together that we go berserk, shopping like mad." 

Every time I see the scene in the village shop when watching "Saving Grace" with Brenda Blethyn, where the two elderly ladies, having drunk a very special tea, hide behind the counter, pop up with big goggle eyes that pop out of the spectacles from the joke items - I have to laugh out loud, every time! (Well, you could put me beside an old-fashioned laughing bag and I would roll around with laughter 😂) 

What do you think about shopping in little villages - or do those kinds of old-fashioned shops still exist in your area?

PS: As Tasker and Joanne asked ... here I will try to explain what "Salmis" are. One picture says more than hundred words - though in this case I doubt it. 

See why: 

"Ah, liquorice!" you might say. 

Yes and no. They add something that sounds horrible: sal ammoniac - which gives a sharp tang and taste (liquorice is more sweet, salmis are WHOW! Salty-sharp). 

People in northern countries love them and have many varieties: the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden - and the region where I come from, Bremen in Northern Germany - countries that are more cold. 

It drives up your blood pressure - maybe this is why we Northerners love it (though I searched for it in Edinburgh in vain.) 

I cannot say more to it - you have to taste it. For a lot of people ONCE is enough forever - the others I would call dangerously addicted  :-)    (you can buy it in every chemist's shop...) 

DELIGHT One: Fountains

 

The last days I was a bit "under the weather", although the sun came out and I got some (personal) very good news. (I will tell you another time). 

So I did what I always do when I feel sort of blue: I looked into my bookcases and took out "Delight" by J.B.Priestly. It was first published in 1949. 

" FOUNTAINS. I doubt if I ever saw one, even the smallest, without some tingling of delight. (...) The richest memory I have of the Bradford Exhibition of my boyhood, (...) is of the Fairy Fountain, which changed colour to the waltzes of the Blue Hungarian Band, and was straight out of the Arabian Night." 

Priestly complains that there are only few fountains in Great Britain: 

"We hunger for them and are not fed." He asks for letters to The Times and even for demonstrations to get them. 

"Their cost is trifling compared to so many idiotic things we are given and do not want. Our towns are crammed with all manner of rubbish that no people in their senses ever asked for, yet where are the fountains?" 

The fountain on the photograph I took at the Victoria Luise Platz, a few steps from my home. The man who designed in 1902 the whole quarter, Mr. Haberland, insisted on many "Schmuckplätze" - Ornamental Places? - where you will find every time a fountain - in always diverging design. 

When they start to sparkle after winter, you know: now it is really spring.   

Query: What do you think about the delight of fountains? Are there fountains where you live, or nearby - and/or do you remember a very special one? 

"Delight"

Dear You, 
when at the start of April suddenly all the many, many fountains of Berlin start to spring up again, you know - well - : it's spring!
Above you see the fountain at the Viktoria-Luise-Platz, two streets from our flat.
The Bavarian Quarter has so many fountains on what the builder/designer Haberland 1900 called 'adornment places' (Schmuckplätze), with banks and trees and flowers and green where people lie on. (Not me in April - can hear my mother still: "Don't lie on greens in months with an "R")
(Which reminds me of Rosemary & Thyme: "After eight months with you, I decided I would never again get romantically entangled with a man who pronounced both the r's in February. (...) She smiled as he silently mouthed the words two or three times.")
No, I promised you literature. So here it is: in his marvelous book "DELIGHT" J.B.Priestley mentioned it as the first of one-hundred-and-fourteen delights.

FOUNTAINS. I doubt if ever I saw one, even the smallest, without some tingling of delight. They enchant me in the daytime, when the sunlight ennobles their jets and sprays and turns their scattered drops into diamonds. They enchant me after dark when coloured lights are played on them, and the night rains emeralds, rubies, sapphires. And, best of all, when the last colour is whisked away, and there they are in a dazzling white glory!" 

(This is only the beginning of a fine description that becomes almost philosophical at the end).
And I will end with another photo of another near-by fountain, the Hirschbrunnen (deer-fountain) at the Rudolph-Wilde-Park: