Delighted By That

The smallest things please me. I found myself this afternoon wandering the aisles of a branch of Superdrug, when I came across a whole aisle full of seemingly miniaturised products.

At first I just saw a small tube of toothpaste and wondered what was so special about it and why it was so expensive. But further looking revealed that there were lots more tiny items like this.

Apparently these are for 'travel' purposes, because modern security dictates that anyone trying to take more than 100ml of toothpaste onto an aeroplane is obviously a no-good terrorist and that therefore the general public is restricted in the amount of highly explosive shower gel, handcream and roll-on deodorants they are allowed to take with them on their flight.

Nonetheless, these tiny-sized facsimiles of the full-sized products filled me with a sense of both delight and nostalgia. There's something about tiny versions of real-life things which I find terribly pleasing. A fascination shared during my childhood, as I well recall the amazement of a school friend who proudly displayed their collection of shrunken crisp packets, tiny and perfect and in every way real, just smaller.

(Apparently this is - or was - achieved by putting empty crisp packets in the oven, causing them to shrink. Or at least it did back in the 1970s. It probably doesn't work like that any more because they almost certainly make crisp packets out of something different now, which does not shrink as well, or at all.)

I had the briefest of flashbacks where I was reminded that these are the sorts of things that I would have been very happy to form into a collection, in my younger years. This may well account for the popularity of the far-too-expensive-to-afford-at-the-time boxes of Kellogg's Variety cereal. Eight little cereal boxes! Who could resist such a thing.

But even back in the present day and in my older age, I did briefly consider purchasing some of these pint-sized items, until I reminded myself with my adult hat on that they were expensive, and that I did not need them.

I am all grown-up and sensible now. For shame.