December 15th, 2005
Door to Door and The Sacred Heart
I know that Christmas tends to be silly season, with everyone overdoing it on the booze and shopping front. Consumerism and spending money has eclipsed what is supposed to be a religious festival (if, of course, you’re religious) and if you think that retail and religiosity are mutually exclusive, think again because the strangest thing just happened chez moi.
I’m working away on my computer and a guy knocks on the front door. Given the time of year I think he’s collecting for charity. No. Selling Christmas cards? Not a chance. Armed with a picture under his arm, he proceeded to try and sell me a framed electrical Sacred Heart painting. You know the ones, with the spooky eyes, the Caucasian Jesus and the exposed ventricles. When you plug it in, the fiery barbed wire chamber around the heart lights up. Even though it has a high kitsch value, I declined on the grounds that I’m not religious.
What’s the strangest thing someone has tried to sell you?
December 15th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
If he comes back will you get me one and I’ll give you the cash when I’m home at Christmas? It’d look great in my loo…
December 15th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Amazing! It reminds me of an accidental coffee stopover we had in Knock about 10 years back when our three girls were smaller. In a religious shop window there was a large picture of Jesus on the cross. It was one of those ribbed dual image surfaces. So when you looked from one angle Jesus was alive with eyes open, from another angle he was slumped and dead!
The kids were highly amused as they jumped back and forth shouting ALIVE… DEAD…ALIVE…DEAD!
It took all our parental skills to keep them from offending the conspicuous gathering of nuns and super-Catholics.
December 16th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
LOL!!! classic
December 17th, 2005 at 4:55 am
A guy with a tired glazed look tried to sell me small cactus plants for 1.5 Irish pounds in the mid-1980s in a Sligo housing estate. I had seen the same items for sale at 75p in Temple Bar only a while previously. I asked what the money was for and he said to rehabilitate drug addicts out foreign. I know this sales ploy is often used by the Moonies, so be aware. Cacti can be prickly.
December 17th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
A guy in a pub in London once tried to sell me one very fancy rollerblade for a tenner. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and it became rather hard to convince him that one-legged rollerblading wasn’t really my thing.
BTW Sinéad, I got the Kris Kindle present in Urban Outfitters in the end, so ta for that.
December 20th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Would love that for our super secular flat -It not so much attracts attention but demands it. Not only adding a festive splash of irony, It produce some seriously psychadelic imagery on our, er, less grounded nights.
December 22nd, 2005 at 10:42 am
my son was successfully sold an 8 X 10″, wood + sheepskin model of a sheep by an African student trying to earn his fees. It is here now, beside me on the table.