Red Carpet Treatment

The rain and wind let up at last, and I headed as usual for the port: a decision shared by many, as this is the season of the Salon Nautique, a very swish boatshow for the super rich. The chromed boats themselves didn't really interest me that much, and anyway I am not mindful to buy a supertub at this particular juncture in the world economy.

What did interest me was that behind the gaudy banners, behind the sinister security fences, behind the ridiculously action-man dressed municipal police, the organisers had rolled out hundreds of metres of red carpet, all along the quaysides.

Coming from North Wales, I had never seen one of these carpets in the flesh. A great desire to walk on one overcame me. I saw that the organisers had included about fifty metres of the stuff before the ticket barriers, so, despite my somewhat casual attire, I put on a confident, potentially yacht-buying expression and sauntered past the fuzz. Plenty of rich people going in the direction of the ticket barrier, but why were they mincing their steps and looking pained?

I soon found out. The torrential rains of last night and this morning had seeped under the plush red carpet, forming concealed puddles, veritable artesian wells of none-too-clean water. As the pampered rich marched forwards towards their outward rewards for the triumph of capitalism, the hydraulic and very material dialectic occasioned by the burden of capital squirted a cold and scummy reminder into their trouser-bottoms and up their shins, a discreet but unmistakable message from below.