(no subject)

...She was taking me to a surprise place, she had booked it as a birthday surprise for months. We ended up at Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium, for lavender cakes and lavender tea, and feline company, and it was all very pleasant, a short walk away from Liverpool Street, and Spitalfields with ChristChurch and Dennis Severs House. I swear, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I must have lived in this area or something because it seems that all roads lead back here, despite my preference for London Bridge or even Richmond. Anyway, we went into the church which was very welcoming and bright, then we sat out in the baking heat with smoothies, and we talked.

Chum has concerns about mutual chum who takes a lot of selfies and puts them on FB. I hadn't noticed to be honest; mutual chum is beautiful, and if she can get modelling work, magazine covers and the like, so much the better. But she can't get them if she ain't seen. If I was that pretty my FB page would be like a Zoolander catalogue!

Another friend of mine works in the city and always turns himself out immaculately. He has olive skin and olive eyes, and though he can wear sober suits, I have seen him at a wedding wearing a very dapper combination of mustard gold cravat, complete with tie-pin and turquoise/emerald waistcoat.* His mother always told him it was his duty to his neighbours and society in general not to be an eyesore. He takes it very seriously.

I always consider petty vanity a folly rather than a vice. There is a tendency to equate it with self obsession and from there to selfishness; and while I can see the connections, they don't necessarily follow. One can be unempathic and never take a single selfie. Self love does not mean self image love, and self image obsession does not mean one can't feel for anyone else.

When it comes to selfies, my personal rule of thumb is to make sure there are always 10 posts between them, so as not to antagonise people, but it does make me wonder: Why are we annoyed by other people's vanity, especially when it is on such a small scale? I guess it's that same tick of irritation one would get if engaged in dinner conversation with someone, only to see them staring at their reflection on the back of their spoon; perhaps there's that sense of someone being more interested in themselves than in anything others have to say. But in the staccato-not-quite-conversational world of FB statuses and comments, I am not sure it counts - there is no flow of conversation to break, indeed one might be involved in several conversations at the same time. I don't see it personally. If my friends want to fill my news feed with pics of themselves pouting, looking gorge, flexing their muscles and showing off new kit and/or great accomplishments, go for it. I would sooner have that than drivelling inspirational quotes wrongly attributed to Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Johnny Depp or all three.

*Obviously that wasn't all he was wearing...