Wednesday 21 January 2009

Strange sale mark downs


Have been sent out to get wine for a dinner we have been invited to tomorrow night. It's delightful being invited out by kind Italians but I always get exhausted translating ( or trying to ) the conversation. No one ever tells you that every region in Italy has its own impenetrable accent. I can understand the President of the Republic when he speaks, I can understand the Pope , despite of, or perhaps because of his German accent but the local Umbrian dialect is totally impenetrable. In France we would be invited out because of the dogs here we get invited out because people seem to be genuinely sociable .

In town en route to the cantina I came across this shop window advertising its sale items. The photos are bad but the reductions are very precise 43%, 26%, 28% and the end price of E25.65 oddly annoying.I would have expected to see 25%, 30% or 50% or a rounding out to a nice even number such as 25 Euro's exactly but such esoteric arithmetical reductions as 26% or 43% strike me as decidedly illogical. Does any other country reduce prices with such precision and employ such strange uneven percentages?



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