Lamborghini: the Italian Dream Machine...

Lawksamussy and shiver my timbers! As a soon-to-be retiree (only 4,375 days to go until I leave the world of work), I was having visions of a life of idyll-ness; my feet up all day, contemplating crosswords and puzzles, drowning in biscuits and cocoa, blooming flowers peeping in the open window, the cat dozing on the sill...perish that thought. Soon, our highways and byways are going to rock to the sound of that Italian futurist dream machine, the Lamborghini, driven by an army of doting grandmothers and delighted grandads....dearie me! Whatever happened to the humble bus pass?

The Lamborghini made its first appearance in 1963, the child of Ferruccio Lamborghini, in response to the Italian demand for fast and beautiful machines, Ferrari, Bugati, et al, no doubt a result of Tomasso Marinetti's 1918 futurist manifesto, declaring the racing car to be more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, something like that. Now, the UK grey brigade is getting in on the act - don't ever say that this government doesn't fund performance art. Since I have not yet raised the quarter mil needed to buy my own machine, I leave you with a picture of the Lamborghini Aventador, courtesy of Google. All together now, vrrrooooooooooomm... See the kind of people who really drive the Lamborghini...

The truth about red nails...

There really is nothing new under the sun. Every time we hit upon a grand and novel idea and proceed to carry it out, we are carrying on a grand and ancient tradition. All that changes is the technology. Digital Imaging? There are prehistoric paintings of the walls of caves in Altmira. Long-distance phone calls? Our forbears lit fires that signalled to their neighbours, until the countryside was ablaze with twinkling conflagrations. This technology only worked at night, and it cannot be a coincidence that evening calls are still cheaper. Everyone knows that the Romans beat us to it with the bath, but I’ll bet that even they were channelling – ha!- more ancient technology. No, there really is nothing new out there, least of all cosmetics. We’ve long known that the Egyptians made perfume, and eye shadow, and mascara. They waxed and henna-ed their hair, and rubbed lanolin into their skins. When it comes to nail polish, we’ve got to hand it to the Chinese, who were using gold and silver pigments c. 3000 BC. Red and black replaced these colours, the polishes being made of beeswax, gelatine, vegetable dyes, gum Arabic, and egg whites – gosh! Of course, the Egyptians were not to be left out. The ordinary folk wore pale colours while royalty wore red, a pointer to the most popular colour of today. Well, the colour has taken a tumble in favour of the more sophisticated offerings from trendy nail bars, but I wiggle my fingers for Chinese cosmeticians and Egyptian royalty. To celebrate tradition, witness my “handie”….