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Laying Your Cards On The Table Like most starving writers, when I get a chance I go to a restaurant and eat real food. Wonderful! My favourite is ‘King Yuen’s’, a Chinese treat for the taste buds. Business men, tourists, locals of all sorts dine there. The place is always packed out. Fabulous food, good company, not too expensive and the service is excellent. People watching and eavesdropping is how I get the plots for my stories, I am not ashamed to admit it. Like most Chinese restaurants it’s all red, black and gold with dangling lanterns and leering dragons. What fascinates me most though is that two whole walls are covered with business cards from all over the world. It’s like an atlas of who’s who and who does what. Diners study them as though they were paintings in an art gallery, which in a way they are. Plain white with black is sort of boring, others are so gaudy I wince and reach for my sun glasses. These really could put you off your food! All is not lost though, thanks to some decent graphic designers and quality printers. Some of the inferior one’s appear to have been done on butcher’s paper and are definitely not pleasing to the eye. Thankfully though there are cards of a superior quality with well thought out designs and printed on the best paper available. No expense has been spared and the customer has well and truly got value for his money. Curiosity is not only for cats. When I saw a well dressed businessman pin his card to the wall I was truly impressed. Politely, I just had to ask him where he had his card printed. He smiled at me charmingly. I fluttered my eyelashes. Why not? In a cultured British accent he told me that he had all his business cards and letterheads printed by a firm called ‘Goodprint’. He was in Australia for a conference. Secret men’s business he said with a wink, then said that in fact he was actually a merchant banker. I was suitably impressed. Being a struggling writer, money in large amounts is something that I only dream about. We walked along the two walls together and he was able to show me other cards that had been done by the same company he used. These, even to an untrained eye were definitely ‘classier’ than the rest. That’s not to say that in the colonies we are totally uncultured, but some of the finer things in life appear to come from overseas. This is unfortunate and I think that the ‘Land Down Under’ is just too far away from almost everything. When my first novel is published I will be doing the Grand Tour and will be having my cards printed by ‘Goodprint’ with a quill embossed on the front. Of course it will have gilt edges. These go down well with your readers when you’re autographing copies of the latest best seller that your publisher has just released. Impoverishment does not suit me! My taste is impeccable but unfortunately I am unable to show it at the moment. After chatting to the banker I returned to my table deciding that when I became rich and famous my secretary would order all of my stationary from ‘Goodprint’. If one has taste and culture it should be shown to it’s best advantage. Before paying for my meal, I again admired the elegant, yet understated card. Class certainly shows. On my way back to the garret where I lived I was more determined than ever to finish this wretched novel and become a card carrying jet-setter. Fleet Street, get ready for the best selling novelist from Australia. I will be strewing my cards all over the place.
This article was posted on October 29, 2005
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