I wish I weren't quite so swayed by pretty. But I so am. As I arrived at my son's school the other afternoon, I saw three little girls, maybe five years old, skipping up to the main school house wearing pink tights, ballet skirts and their school blazers. With pigtails. So pretty.
My friend Dawn is a fan of pretty - on many shopping trips with her I recall her spying some item of clothing and exclaiming 'preeettttyyyy' as confirmation: yes she wanted to buy it. Bring on the guilt sweats.
Planning the Christmas stock for L'Apothecary (I know, I know; cutting it fine on timings but really trying hard; you live and learn in a new business). Pretty boxes and pretty ribbons and pretty tags and pretty bottles. Whilst there is a scientific core to what we make, for me there is so much about it that is to do with having something pretty on your dressing table.
I ask myself - should it all matter? As the sabbatical-induced soul search continues I find myself thinking about all sorts of things I never used to. I am, quite categorically, out of my comfort zone. I am used to corporate rigidity; rushing the school run to make my 9am conference call. Rushing to get every little action ticked off my list - they say if you need something done, give it to a working mother, the inference being that when you run at that pace, you are uber efficient. I now have the time to observe. And what I observe is that actually, pretty matters.
Without pretty I wonder whether Pinterest would even exist. It is an ode to pretty and those who 'pin' spend time searching for the most beautiful versions of everything to store up in case a hit of pretty is needed. I follow some 'pinners' whose repertoire is just breath-taking! What on earth did we do before Pinterest? Answer: cut stuff out of magazines, file them away in places that gathered dust. Can I just say that it is these kind of technological advances that I adore?
I spend a lot of time defending the march of technology to my contemporaries. Many of my very good friends don't 'do' social media, don't 'get' technology, don't want to try it out. I do understand this and frankly, without Pinterest one can still get through the day. However - why shun the advance? I can be heard at any point when this conversation comes up, with friends, peers, anyone, saying emphatically 'embrace the technology'! We must - or else it will pass us by. It is the future; our kids function through it and will continue to do so in ways we can't even imagine now. You just have to try.
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