A guide to what's hot and what's not
WHAT'S HOT
Cool parents At last, stylish leather baby bags to hold all that stuff. From Petit Planet; see planet21group.com.
Brack Why don't we eat it all year round?
Visine eye drops Ocular happiness in a bottle; the best cure for red-eye that we know. Get a US resident to bring some home at Christmas.
Autumn colour Showing nationwide, on a tree near you.
Roamin' holidays Learn how to have cheaper mobile charges abroad, on http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/ roaming.
Arrogant Frog An Aussie-style name and a screw cap for this white wine from Languedoc. Tastes pretty good, too.
Great jazz discovery Long-lost but pristine 1957 recording of the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane,at Carnegie Hall. Just reissued by Blue Note. A very cool combo.
WHAT'S COLD
Unreadable books Teeny print on paperbacks given as freebies with magazines.
Overchlorinated swimming pools You weep all the way home after a swim, and your fellow commuters presume you're having a nervous breakdown.
Curly-wurly bamboo Florists, please get a new prop.
Music in bars and restaurants As a people, we should stand up and say: 'We can't take it any more.'
Kate Winslet She may, behind the glitz, be a regular woman but does she have to parade her down-home earth motherliness for American Express's latest ad campaign?
Checkout cheats "Ten items or fewer" does not mean 24 products in one basket, especially when it means hogging the supermarket's self-service "fast lane".
Thanks to Phyl Clarke, Karina Corbett, Jane Powers and Kate Healy of the EC.
• Send your Hots and Colds to index@irish-times.ie