Forty-Eight Baby Bottles
The crates were piled dozens high and dozens wide. All made of wood with hand- grips cut in the end. The legend Forty-Eight Baby Bottles was stencilled on to each one. For some reason I found the sight sinister. All those babies. All those bottles, and why the wooden crates? Somehow it did not seem right to put baby bottles in wooden crates especially forty-eight at a time. It conjured up images of fatted calves all packed tightly into trucks and heading for the continent. I thought of Malthus and population control, and of Hitler and the Holocaust. Suddenly the crates resembled coffins. They had not been neatly stacked. Some stood proud of the others. A few lent at a crazy angle, as if they did not quite fit in and had been abandoned. Then I noticed there was more writing along the sides of the boxes. I looked closer and saw the word Moussec. In a flash the scene changed. The mood of the image altered and it became a jumble of luxury, decadence, fun and good times, but all parcelled in small, neat civilised baby bottles of booze.