Leith is who we are.
Leith is where we are.
The Leith Agency's weblog.

There are odd bits of chat flying about on the subject of what proper trend seekers might call “fashionable austerity” or maybe I’ve just made this term up. But you know the sort of thing I mean - vintage or customised old clothes as cool, sprucing up old furniture to give it new life, of course carrying your canvas bag with you at all times rather than taking dirty wasteful plastic bags from supermarkets and such like.

Some commentators endeavour to see a return to the ethics of the great wars which seems a bit of an over-optimistic reaction. But then I have just finished reading a rather superb novel called The Kindly Ones (Jonathan Littell) which in 1,000 glorious pages charts the wartime experiences of an SS officer. It’s a cracking read if you have the patience. The point being that fashionable austerity wasn’t really a feature of the normal person’s experiences in the second world war. It was more about getting by.

But I’m rambling. The point is, there’s a lovely ad in today’s Metro, courtesy of Sainsbury’s for their nectar card, which in the face of yesterday’s austere budget, is brilliantly topical.

Amidst breast puns galore, M&S have this morning retracted their £2 extra charge for bras for plumper breasted women. Courtesy, as ever, of facebook and the informal but fearful pressure group network. Having heard about it on Radio 4, I opend the Metro to find a glorious full page ad of breasts with the fine headline: “we’ve boobed”. And the rest of the newspapers are having a field day. The Scotsman is one of the gentler examples.

So enjoy. It’s a license if ever you needed one, to let puns, lewd comments and general ribaldry abound. (Disapproving though I may be!)