Saturday, October 26, 2013

To me, fair friend, you never can be old

I visited today with the children Helsinki Book Fair, and spent 3 1/2 hours there. It is more tiring to walk around a fair or an exhibition than walking the same amount of time in a forest or a swamp. Why it is so, I wonder.

(Posting title is from Sonnet CIV by William Shakespeare.)

8 comments:

Martina said...

Not to talk of tiresome clothes shopping.

My theory is, it's the standing around, not the walking.

Juha Haataja said...

Oh yes, with three daughters I know the pain of clothes shopping.

Martina said...

With one boyfriend who needs three years to buy a new winter coat I know the pain, too. ;-)

Juha Haataja said...

I bought a new winter coat last winter, but I still fondly remember the old coat which I had for 10 years or so. Maybe in five years the new one will feel like it belongs to me.

Martina said...

His old coat was already very old three years ago ;-) It really took three years with going shopping each and every of these years to find something he liked. grin.
And - that's the point - he finds walking for hours in the forest or in the mountains much less exhausting than two hours of shopping. The standing around theory was originally his idea.

Juha Haataja said...

Well, I think the standing around theory has a sound basis in reality.

Come to think of it, my old coat was older that I realized. I got it about the same time I had a Nokia 8110i phone, in 1997. I was carrying the phone in a holster on the hip, and the holster made scratches on the inner lining of the coat so that the fabric started unraveling. But I still used the coat until this year.

Martina said...

I am not going to ask the boyfriend who old his old coat was. Is. Because ... of course it's still there. It might be good to wear for gardening. ;-)

Cedric Canard said...

I know what you're saying Juha. I suspect that the difference lies in what I like to call the energy conversion factor. When walking in nature, the energy expended in walking is returned in part by the surrounding beauty, whereas in shopping malls, the artificialness of the surroundings actually sucks out your energy.
Fortunately, my teenage daughter hates going shopping.