jeffportnoy
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2019
- Messages
- 24
Not sure if this crowd has much crossover with Top Gear/Grand Tour fans. That said, you may find this article funny/interesting as I did.
Jeremy Clarkson: Real diamonds are clearly designed to ruin men. Give me a Didcot knock‑off any day
jeremy clarkson
As we know, it is completely impossible for a normal human man to buy jewellery for his wife or girlfriend. And soon it's going to be harder still. In the run-up to last Christmas I was given a subtle hint that I should buy some drop earrings. And when someone says, "I don't have any drop earrings and I would like some", even I'm able to work out the hidden meaning.
So I went online to see what a drop earring was and then went to London, where I reckoned I'd be able to buy some.
There were many on show, but after 20 minutes of staring at them, with the same level of interest as I use on red traffic lights, I was fighting back the urge to curl up on the pavement and die of boredom. But then one pair caught my eye. They were blue, and as I like the colour blue, I went into the shop and asked the orange lady behind the counter if she would get them out of the locked glass case.
There was a lot of pomp that went into granting this simple request, and as the door swung open, I half expected to be serenaded by Beethoven's Ode to Joy. But eventually the earrings were laid out on a cushion for me to inspect. This was like asking my mother to inspect a ship's boiler. I had no idea what I was supposed to notice, so I said: "Mmmm. Yes. They're lovely. I'll take them."
There was then more pomp, and I was offered a glass of champagne while the earrings were wrapped, and then I was presented with the bill, which was, and there's no other way of saying this, £67,000.
It was hard to work out what I should do at this point. My mind was spinning and my eyes were suddenly full of sweat. "Hmmm," I said. And then, "Hmmm," I said again, buying some time until a solution presented itself.
Eventually, I'm delighted to say, it did. I turned and fled.
Why don't jewellery shops put prices on the jewellery they're selling? Do they like humiliating their customers? Or are they practising for some kind of world smirking championship? And, while we are at it, why don't they also provide a handy guide next to each piece explaining why it is worth £67,000 more than the stuff you get in seaside trinket shops? Bridegrooms in Britain spend around £500 less on engagement rings than brides would expect. But, apart from in Yorkshire, where the figure is lower, they still blow around £1,500. You could get a pretty good car for that. Certainly it'd buy you a very stylish oven. Whereas all you get from a ring is some metal and a rock.
To me all jewellery looks exactly the same. A gold bracelet that you win if you are good at hooking a fairground duck is identical in every way to a bracelet that you buy from one of those Bond Street shops that are guarded by former soldiers with curly ear pieces.
And diamonds? You can tell a good one from a bad one only if you have 30 years of training and a very powerful microscope. Or if you are a shallow woman in Monte Carlo. To me they are all sort of silvery and see-through and small. Carats, in my book, are like Def Con numbers. Are the higher ones better, or is it the other way round? I'd be as useless at being a billionaire as I would at being a president of America.
And now things are about to get even tougher, because in a U-turn in policy on synthetic diamonds, De Beers has decided that it's silly to wait 4 billion years for a diamond to form and has announced that it's to start a production line in its factory in Oxfordshire that can make them in three weeks. Now I happen to know that in Namibia, once every so often, mining companies use hundreds of bulldozers to push the beach out to sea at low tide. This creates a flimsy sea wall, which holds the incoming tide at bay while thousands of workers scamper onto the sea bed with toothbrushes to look for diamonds stuck in the cracks of the rock.
Of course, I can see that something that needs this level of danger and expense to recover is going to be a bit pricy. Whereas something made in Oxfordshire by squeezing and heating a small honeycomb of carbon isn't. Yes, the squeezing is quite intense — the same pressure as the Eiffel Tower sitting on a fizzy drinks can, in fact. And the heating is more than you can get from a Primus stove. But we are not talking about kryptonite here. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe. So charging big money for it would be as daft as charging big money for hydrogen and oxygen. Actually, strike that — Evian does.
Whatever, when De Beers is up and running with its new diamond factories, I shall be presented by an orange shop lady with two diamonds. One has taken billions of years to form under Africa and has been recovered by the performance of dental work on the sea bed, and the other has been made, like a pencil, in Didcot. And to my eye they will appear to be identical. Which is because they are identical. Because they are both diamonds.
De Beers itself has spent millions over the years on machines that can tell laboratory diamonds from the real thing. So why, it must be asked, bother with the real thing at all? Giving me the choice in a shop of spending £2,000 on the real thing or £600 on something that is also real, but that will get me a slap should the receipt ever surface, is just another unnecessary burden of difficulty for the human male.
Still, at least we don't have to buy wedding dresses. Because — and I will take absolutely no argument on this — they are all identical as well.
***
Jeremy Clarkson: Real diamonds are clearly designed to ruin men. Give me a Didcot knock‑off any day
jeremy clarkson
As we know, it is completely impossible for a normal human man to buy jewellery for his wife or girlfriend. And soon it's going to be harder still. In the run-up to last Christmas I was given a subtle hint that I should buy some drop earrings. And when someone says, "I don't have any drop earrings and I would like some", even I'm able to work out the hidden meaning.
So I went online to see what a drop earring was and then went to London, where I reckoned I'd be able to buy some.
There were many on show, but after 20 minutes of staring at them, with the same level of interest as I use on red traffic lights, I was fighting back the urge to curl up on the pavement and die of boredom. But then one pair caught my eye. They were blue, and as I like the colour blue, I went into the shop and asked the orange lady behind the counter if she would get them out of the locked glass case.
There was a lot of pomp that went into granting this simple request, and as the door swung open, I half expected to be serenaded by Beethoven's Ode to Joy. But eventually the earrings were laid out on a cushion for me to inspect. This was like asking my mother to inspect a ship's boiler. I had no idea what I was supposed to notice, so I said: "Mmmm. Yes. They're lovely. I'll take them."
There was then more pomp, and I was offered a glass of champagne while the earrings were wrapped, and then I was presented with the bill, which was, and there's no other way of saying this, £67,000.
It was hard to work out what I should do at this point. My mind was spinning and my eyes were suddenly full of sweat. "Hmmm," I said. And then, "Hmmm," I said again, buying some time until a solution presented itself.
Eventually, I'm delighted to say, it did. I turned and fled.
Why don't jewellery shops put prices on the jewellery they're selling? Do they like humiliating their customers? Or are they practising for some kind of world smirking championship? And, while we are at it, why don't they also provide a handy guide next to each piece explaining why it is worth £67,000 more than the stuff you get in seaside trinket shops? Bridegrooms in Britain spend around £500 less on engagement rings than brides would expect. But, apart from in Yorkshire, where the figure is lower, they still blow around £1,500. You could get a pretty good car for that. Certainly it'd buy you a very stylish oven. Whereas all you get from a ring is some metal and a rock.
To me all jewellery looks exactly the same. A gold bracelet that you win if you are good at hooking a fairground duck is identical in every way to a bracelet that you buy from one of those Bond Street shops that are guarded by former soldiers with curly ear pieces.
And diamonds? You can tell a good one from a bad one only if you have 30 years of training and a very powerful microscope. Or if you are a shallow woman in Monte Carlo. To me they are all sort of silvery and see-through and small. Carats, in my book, are like Def Con numbers. Are the higher ones better, or is it the other way round? I'd be as useless at being a billionaire as I would at being a president of America.
And now things are about to get even tougher, because in a U-turn in policy on synthetic diamonds, De Beers has decided that it's silly to wait 4 billion years for a diamond to form and has announced that it's to start a production line in its factory in Oxfordshire that can make them in three weeks. Now I happen to know that in Namibia, once every so often, mining companies use hundreds of bulldozers to push the beach out to sea at low tide. This creates a flimsy sea wall, which holds the incoming tide at bay while thousands of workers scamper onto the sea bed with toothbrushes to look for diamonds stuck in the cracks of the rock.
Of course, I can see that something that needs this level of danger and expense to recover is going to be a bit pricy. Whereas something made in Oxfordshire by squeezing and heating a small honeycomb of carbon isn't. Yes, the squeezing is quite intense — the same pressure as the Eiffel Tower sitting on a fizzy drinks can, in fact. And the heating is more than you can get from a Primus stove. But we are not talking about kryptonite here. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe. So charging big money for it would be as daft as charging big money for hydrogen and oxygen. Actually, strike that — Evian does.
Whatever, when De Beers is up and running with its new diamond factories, I shall be presented by an orange shop lady with two diamonds. One has taken billions of years to form under Africa and has been recovered by the performance of dental work on the sea bed, and the other has been made, like a pencil, in Didcot. And to my eye they will appear to be identical. Which is because they are identical. Because they are both diamonds.
De Beers itself has spent millions over the years on machines that can tell laboratory diamonds from the real thing. So why, it must be asked, bother with the real thing at all? Giving me the choice in a shop of spending £2,000 on the real thing or £600 on something that is also real, but that will get me a slap should the receipt ever surface, is just another unnecessary burden of difficulty for the human male.
Still, at least we don't have to buy wedding dresses. Because — and I will take absolutely no argument on this — they are all identical as well.
***
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