The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:00pm on Friday, 15th February, 2019:
Anecdote
This morning my wife was getting a new pair of glasses. I knew she'd spend an hour choosing the frames, so I took the opportunity to visit another shop that, coincidentally, also dealt in frames.
So, in 1989 we went to Egypt and bought some pictures on papyrus. These weren't the usual tourist tat and we liked them a lot. We had a big one framed and gave a smaller one to my wife's parents. They had it framed differently. Recently, this smaller one fell off the wall and broke, so my father-in-law gave us it back. We decided to have it reframed to match the larger one.
The bloke in the framing shop remembered the picture, even though it was 30 years ago when he did the work. He remembered the number of the moulding used for the frame. Unfortunately, when he checked the catalogues, it turned out that they've stopped making it. There are no mouldings with a similar profile made by other companies, either.
OK, so I said we could reframe the large picture as well so the two matched. Unfortunately, he couldn't find backing card in exactly the same shade of brown, either. There was one that was close, and that would probably go the same colour as the other one if left for 30 years, but it wasn't identical.
Right, fine, let's change the backing card for the larger one as well. Total cost: something like £100, which, as usual, is somewhat in excess of the value of the pictures being framed.
This whole exchange must have taken half an hour. I had plenty of time, though, because my wife took another hour before she emerged from the optician's.
I explained what had happened. She said that if we were having it all reframed then it needed to match the new decor of the front room. Thereupon, she marched to the framing shop and chose a completely different frame with a completely different colour backing card that came to £20 more.
I know whose credit card that's going on, then...
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Copyright © 2019 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).