Comparing the Market

I was going to write a fascinating account of getting my ears pierced for the first time this week, but the experience was so exactly like what I'd imagined that I somehow stymied myself. At any rate, I'm happy to report that, pace the ear-piercing scream in Among Others, my magical powers stand much where they did.

(Contrariwise, I feel very sorry for the mother in this year's John Lewis Xmas advert, who tragically loses the ability to see her young son's pet penguin as anything other than a stuffed toy. Made me sniff.)

Other signs of Christmas: the stencil they use at Costa for dusting chocolate onto cappuccinos now resembles a reindeer head. And the German market has appeared in the centre of Bristol. I was in town on Tuesday night with my friend Maryam (to watch Gone Girl), and saw the wooden stalls being swiftly and efficiently erected under floodlights by - yes, the adverbs are a giveaway - real Germans, working out of a real German lorry. It had never occurred to either of us that it was a German German market, rather than being stored eleven months of the year in a trading estate in Solihull. This somehow feels much more festive.