"It is best to wash one's linen at home" : it follows that the best way to investigate the culture of a nation is to study how it deals with its supply of linen. The inextricable network of habits which defines the culture of a country and marks its contrasts with the others has been known since 1994 as "the little differences". It was shown at the time that, as far as anglo-saxon countries are concerned, most of those little differences exist "because of the metric system". But how does the story fit when jumping from Quarter Pound with Cheese to fitted sheet?
At first sight, beds, mattresses, covers and sheets in the English-speaking world seem to get in the metrics. Bedding and linen are there ranked between Single, the same 90 cm wide beds than on the continent and Double, the 140 cm wide beds most continental couples are used to. But as soon as one wants a wider bed, he has to get out of the metrics : beds are then " 5 feet wide" or "6 feet wide". The Empire has given in on the smallest beds, but not on the biggest ones. It tells us a lot about the diffusion of the metric system among fat people in the UK.
This analysis, combined to the study of the natality curves in the United Kingdom, can be used to predict the forthcoming collapse of the British Empire, and gives us the right to say whatever we want about economics for the years to come.
The linen case could actually be generalized to all the bedding field. It is not what this post is primarily dealing with, but we would then come to the conclusion that bedding is extremely exposed to lath dependency.
Lath dependency... F**k, what a good play on words.
ReplyDeletePlease, more insightful posts, Stage!