Madazine
Copyright© 2017 by Scriptorius
Chapter 72
The item below is a scribble our boss did recently. He probably didn’t mean to have it included in Madazine, but he’s away for a couple of days, so I’m slipping it in. He’ll be cross when he gets back, but in the meantime I’m in charge so there’s nothing he can do about it. Tom Bola, Subeditor.
Golden Thoughts
Some time ago, I noted with interest that the UK had sold a sizable part of its gold reserves. I had nothing against the move, but found myself thinking about this metal in general. Though no expert, I understand that it has certain useful qualities – the immutability of which Charles de Gaulle spoke with such emotion, the ductility and goodness knows what else. However, I have long been puzzled by the ‘use’ to which so much of it is put.
It seems that I am not the first person to express bafflement here. I once read a short story in which, purely as an aside, the main character remarked that he could not comprehend why gold was extracted, mostly from deep holes in the ground, at not inconsiderable human and environmental cost, only for a very large part of it to be processed at further great expense, then buried in other underground locations around the world. The man commented in much the same manner about diamonds.
While dwelling on this matter, my train of thought drifted to humanly contrived items. Possibly this musing was inspired by the fact that just before reading the above-mentioned story, I had watched an antique show in which I saw a number of bits of old junk sold for astounding sums of money, merely because they were rare. Nobody seemed to consider whether they were desirable in any other way.
My ruminations went on to postage stamps, which I imagine must, relative to size and weight, be the most prized of all objects. I understand that there are instances of a single one being sold at auction for millions of pounds, merely because of a belief that it is unique. Imagine the reaction of a collector who pays a vast sum for such an item, then hears of somebody unearthing a long-lost cache of identical ones.
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