These Moments Matter: An inside joke

For the "Inside Jokes" challenge at the "Pixels, Paper & Paint - Life in Pictures with Rachel and Lynn" (our Substack newsletter). Can't believe I actually found photos of the day!

HMV 12 Masking template, Peregrination, HMV27 Balancing, Let it Go

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It’s a catchphrase we will say for the rest of our lives: “It’s just too expensive honey, sorry”. Trotted out whenever we joke about buying a chateau or see some overpriced tat. It’s an ‘in joke’ with an underbelly of chagrin and regret. Not funny at all on the day in 2012 when we were wandering around a market in Brittany. Not an atmospheric market with artisan products, but a dusty carpark filled with stalls of the sort where in the past I have found old lace or heavy ancient cotton pillowcases. This time I was mulling over an antique souvenir plate. It was ten euros. I was unsure, but still entirely unimpressed when B dismissed it with “It’s just too expensive honey, sorry”. It was the “sorry” that did it. Somehow implying that it was his right to refuse, as if I didn’t earn my own money that I could spend on an old plate if I so chose. I am sure he didn’t mean it that way, it was just an awkward and diffident way of expressing his lack of enthusiasm for this grimy, slightly cracked object. But the ensuing spat before I stalked off was enough to ensure the phrase would never be forgotten. Within days we were laughing about it, which I assumed he meant he had got over my reaction. Perhaps, perhaps not. A few years on we even used it to create the acronym of a business. For the rest of our lives we will be saying it and laughing every time. But it still makes me sad that we couldn’t communicate better at the time.