One hundred percent natural

At last, I have pearls. Faithful Reader might recall my past pining for these one hundred-per-cent-natural items of personal adornment. And I doubted I would ever have any to call my own. But, while in Buenos Aires, S and I nipped across the vast, muddy River Plate to Colonia, Uruguay, and I bought these from a nice man in a shop on the main street.

Certainly, they are not your pricey salt-water examples - they're river pearls, probably Vietnamese. But I love their irregular shapes, and their quiet gleam (they're not the nasty yellowish tone my poorly lit photo suggests). Thank you, all you oysters. 

S and I were both suffering from the monstrous BA cold we all went down with, and that quiet day in Colonia was a lovely respite from the noise and pollution of the city across the river.  

Thou shalt not covet ...

Once upon a time pearls stood for everything I disliked and rejected. They were polite, conventional, middle-class and, whatever the age of the wearer, middle-aged. Less an adornment than a marker of respectability.
Before the 70s struck, though, girls my own age of a certain type wore them to university with twinsets, camel coats and pigskin handbags. Just writing that makes my flesh crawl, not because I hated those accoutrements but because I so badly coveted them in order to be one of these girls. No chance. I lacked the money, the private school vowels and the breezy confidence.
When this mode of dress finally went out the window, I was for the first time in my sartorial element. And I would no more of dreamed of donning pearls than reverting to a suspender belt.

Queen Elizabeth II

But the times change and so, Queenie aside, do we.
I've never been much impressed by precious stones, always being more attracted to opals, amethysts, moonstones and so. But I've noticed how even a string of cheap faux pearls reflect their soft glow on skin that isn't as young as it used to be, so that the lovely old-fashioned word becoming comes to mind.
My appreciation was cranked up a notch by reading the new Coco Chanel biography last year, and admiring portrait after portrait of her dressed in black and long strings of pearls.



Coco Chanel















Once a certain level of appreciation is attained, covetousness, I'm afraid, isn't far behind.
Even so, I surprised myself last week on Lambton Quay when, bent on some mundane mission or other, I stopped dead in front of a jeweller's window to admire a long double rope of big irregularly shaped pearls.
I never look in jeweller's windows; their array of gold and silver bores me rigid. But this ... it hung from a plaster neck, heavy, gleaming and quietly gorgeous.
I only looked for a moment, then found myself marching into the shop and asking if I could see it. The young assistant (I think she was French and therefore understood these things) reached into the window. I said I had no intention of buying it and she smiled indulgently and handed it to me. I promptly slipped it over my neck.
They were south sea pearls, said the assistant. That was why they were so big.
"How much?" I asked, fingering the lovely weighty shapes.
She reached for the price tag at the back of my neck.
"$31,775." 
I handed them back, said thank you and left the shop.