Die-monds

Dear Diamonds,

Everybody’s favourite Dame, Shirley “I-don’t-pop-my-cork-for-every-man-I-see” Bassey (she does) once told us that you were a girl’s best friend, a message reiterated by an especially pallid Nicole Kidman from a high perch in Lurhmann’s subdued piece, Moulin Rouge. From the moment I saw you I thought this could be true but I feel increasingly disillusioned. If we were friends, we’d always be together like peas and carats, I’d have you wrapped around my finger and I wouldn’t mined (sic) when you get all up in my grill like you do with Kanye.

I could even accept that there is a generation gap. You have felt the need to hide underground for a couple of billion years, which is odd as you are the hardest naturally occurring thing on earth. This is clearly because you are a fraud and you don’t want the world to know that you are just glorified CARBON! Then again, a wise person once said you are “a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure” and if I had even a basic understanding of chemistry this might resonate at an intellectual level as well as an emotional one, but failing that I can only exclaim that YOU ARE COAL!

You’re all such terrible pikers too. You never come out for a girls’ night except in the aftermath of a major volcanic eruption, followed by millions of years of nothing and the establishment and proliferation of a US$13 billion a year industry to unearth you and make you pretty, at great expense and loss of life. Even then most of you can never be pretty, you will become scalpels and round saws, like your ugly yellow synthesised cousins. Luckily, for the ones that are pretty, most women would and frequently do sell their first born, or remain married to men they detest for 60 years and hope that milestone anniversary is remembered and rewarded with you. It’s not. No wonder Dame Bassey encouraged a one Big Spender to spend a little time with her. She had the right idea.

I propose the introduction of a 5^th “C” word in the rating of you, in addition to cut, colour, clarity and carat, but as children read this I can’t say what that might be. If you weren’t buried so far underground I would throw a diamond gauntlet at you, as only you can destroy you, but as I don’t have one I will issue this request instead. Please become less well concealed, less expensive, less able to be used to fund guerrilla warfare in African trouble spots and more on my finger.

Thank you

Kyrani