Flawless
August 22nd, 2003
As with every expensive purchase I have ever made, when I bought Lara her engagement ring I did my research.
This is such a male trait, I find it amusing. Somewhere on the xx chromosome must be a gene whose principle phenotype is standing around in WHSmith, reading magazines with a ? in the title.
Anyway, the idea was to buy a stone over the internet and let Lara choose the setting she wanted. This would have been a very neat way of having something tangible to persuade her with, without the risk of offending her micro-finely tuned sense of taste.
The web performed it’s magic and I learned all about the 4 C’s, optimal table depth, sparkle, and lots more – including how much I could expect to pay for something suitable for a suitor.
So now I’ve made a not inconsiderable investment, I’m quite disturbed to read about developments in the diamond business like this story about synthetic diamond manufacture, from the current issue of Wired magazine:
“...they’re real” I tell him, “but they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars”
[The dealer] shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."’