Spooky...

Missmc has been out three nights in a row again after a grueling week.  Thankfully, I was drinking blueberry juice last night rather than whatever it was that I had too much of the evening before.  Blueberry juice?  It was that, or, falling asleep at the dinner party with our spy friend.  The spy was in good form and spent a good amount of time analyzing the books in the host's loo to comedic effect.  It was a welcome diversion as it is often quite hard to catch up with old friends that, really, have about 300 taboo topics sitting like a herd of invisible white elephants at the table.  He is a gem.  And, if you must ask, he is not a spook.  He is a "civil servant".

We also spent some time over the weekend in the V&A.  It was another case of things being not really what they seem to be.  We toured one of the Cast Courts and marveled at reproductions of an endless number of tombs, caskets and monuments, mostly medieval.  It was strikingly in harmony with the "Telling Tales" exhibition of contemporary design at the V&A.  Walking from the medieval into the contemporary was not much of a leap as death, fantasy and allegories continued on.  It was all very October.

Medieval and October are of course bound together conceptually with their joint obsession with death, as nature retires and sheds its leaves and hunkers down for the winter.  The markets tend to go all goth and join in with this autumn spirit.  Is human nature really that predictable to revisit gloom on a predictable basis?  If any clues can be taken from the art and design world, the answer appears to be yes.