Cold coffee

My friend, Vicki, always sagely maintained, 'you can't reheat cold coffee'. She was referring to getting back together with someone you had broken up with or an old flame. I had various arguments against her proclamation. What if the coffee didn't actually get cold. It was sitting on the back burner while you worked out some other stuff...Or what if the coffee was really good quality coffee in the first place. Then I bet it tasted fine once you reheated it....Or, sure, reheated coffee tastes different, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

In this instance, I don't want to talk about relationships. Clearly, that's a field way too fraught with peril. What I want to explore is this nostalgic look over our shoulder that we (or those who dictate fashion, entertainment, food trends) do when things are dredged up from the past, the dust is brushed off them, brilliant marketing and rebranding hypnotise us and we forget why that thing has been shelved for the last 20 years and present or receive it as genius or cult or retro/cool/hipster.

Exhibit A: Monopoly. London street names and railway stations...who could ever pronounce Marylebone? Buying property, putting houses on it, charging rent. WHY was this such a great game for kids? Capitalism 101. And the games went on FORever. As does the life of Monopoly, apparently. Hasbro have just conducted a month-long poll, enlisting its social media friends by announcing the poll on YouTube then running it on Facebook. Very street. (Ha! See what I did there? ... Monopoly is all about buying streets...what? oh you got that already? Very good, I'll continue...) The long and the short of it is that the iron has been thrown out the window to be replaced by a cat. The vice president of Hasbro explained in what I believe was one of those condescending slow I'm-explaining-this-to-you-but-I-know-you-have-no-idea voices (which is possibly encapsulated in the 'condescending slow' part of the sentence), 'that monopoly fans are very passionate about their tokens'. Boy howdy. Just as well the iron has gone. We don't want anyone getting passionate about such a misogynistic representation of female oppression. A cat makes much more sense.

And I've heard rumours about Monopoly, the film....Ummmmm. That's all I'm going to say about that.

And speaking of films. Star Wars. Surely, surely, the intergalactic coffee is well and truly cold here. But no, we're pouring it from whatever receptacle it's been in for the last 40 years, purposefully not seeing the mould growing on top of it, pouring it into a Toby jug and nuking it in a 1970s Sanyo microwave.

Star Wars spin-off films. In addition to the three sequels already announced. I think there have been enough spin-offs already. I think a few planets have already spun off their axes in interplanetary collective despair. But sure, the characters of Bobo Fett, Yoda and Hans Solo have not yet fully been explored. Let's do that. The Skywalkers have had enough airtime. Not to mention the Ewoks.

Sometimes enough is enough. Less is more. Surely.

I'm off for a herbal tea.