WHOOOOOOOSH!!!!

Whooooooosh!!!!

“What was that?”

“That was your life mate.”

“Crikey! Where did that go?”

I always get that feeling on a Monday morning. The last time I looked, I’m sure it was Friday, and I remember last Monday morning as if it was yesterday… Can it really be a week ago already?

And yet some things that happened in June seem like they were much, much longer ago for some bizarre reasons of time perception that always baffle me.

So, where did the weekend go? I will admit that I don’t have the most “active” of lives, huddling away here in the darkness, avoiding the universe and all its madness, but even I have to be drawn out into the big wide world when the great consumerist sledgehammer of Chrimbletide starts to make itself noticed.

I settled down on the sofa last week and because of a strange lack of foresight, for once I had to actually sit down and experience what we used to call a "commercial break" for the first time in quite a while. It came as quite a shock to someone who watches most of his telly through the medium of the disc that is oh-so shiny because there really is so very little that speaks to me nowadays, or on the recorder so I can fast-forward through the ads. Settling down to watch some programme “live” as it were on a station that has advert breaks always finds me twitching and reaching for the remote in an effort to avoid those ridiculous singalongs…

“Christmas Ads are coming… Christmas ads are coming…”

…because I really don’t want to be one of those people who start a conversation with “Have you seen that advert where…?” because ultimately it’s shallow, pointless and tells you that really, as a culture, we need to get out more, and not just so we can sing along to the musak in the supermarket. (You know who you are!)

What is really troubling is that the 3 or 4 ad breaks I endured that evening only seemed to be pushing the kinds of bizarrely named and bottled alcoholic drinks that you only ever seem to think you might even consider the remotest possibility of drinking on one day of the year, or consist of obscurely indecipherable twaddle trying to persuade you that your life will change for the better if you slap on some expensive pong that makes you smell like an alcoholic and burns out the retinas of anyone else unfortunate enough to have to stand within thirty feet of you.

No, I’m sorry, I really don’t understand the cult of perfumery.

Anyway, having been bombarded by this advertising blitz, and having thought to myself “Crikey, they get earlier every year…” I looked at the calendar and realised it was November already. (Yes, I know all those bangs and flashes outside should have been a bit of a clue, but I somehow always fail to connect firework night – “Remember, remember the Fifth of November” – with the reality of “Flippin’ heck! It’s November!”) Heck, where did that year go? Never mind that, where did that decade go? Can it really be nearly eleven years since I watched the Millennium fireworks on Sydney Harbour Bridge? Not in person, you understand... On Television. I’ve always been very antisocial when it comes to New Year’s Eve (but that’s another story).

So it dawned on me that the season was almost upon us, and I’d better start to do something about it. An expedition to one of the larger supermarkets put paid to Saturday, and Sunday vanished in another expedition to one of our more exclusive department stores. From here, pretty much going anywhere is an expedition, you see... Especially since all the little local shops have been replaced by more takeaways than one small town could ever really need.

Oddly I didn’t buy anything myself. Our mission on Sunday involved other more immediate issues that needed resolving, but it was worth having a look around to see what’s what and make a few mental notes for when I’m out shopping alone for gifts some other time.

What worried me about this particular department store (apart from the prices of course, they’re always a worry in that place) was the sheer amount of basically useless rubbish that they are selling, and the way we all lap it up. Racks and racks full of so many “novelty items” that are presumably purchased for “a bit of a laugh” (there’s that phrase again, fans) and which will be cast aside and completely forgotten about mere seconds later. This frighteningly consumerist society in which we live has us blathering on about the environment on the one hand whilst simultaneously filling our lives with utter garbage that we neither want nor need and we can’t seem to make the connection. If nobody has any money any more, why are we wasting it on all this rubbish?

Then, of course, there are the vagaries of fashion and the kind of overpriced clothing that people walk around in just because of a flipping label. I saw what I can only describe as what we used to call a “donkey jacket” being sold under one label for nearly five hundred quid, and the quality of the cloth was frankly dire, and yet the whole place was full of people plastered in makeup and eye-watering pong they’ll just wash off later, and massively overpriced clothing that they might only wear once or twice, looking thoroughly miserable because they just had to spend their Sunday in that wretched place getting even more stuff even if they didn’t really need it.

And still there’s real poverty out there in the world, real actual people who’d be grateful for any of our cast offs and might be able to feed themselves for a week on what someone might pay for some “hilarious” edible pants.

I do have a theory, and it’s a quite brutal one if you think about it, but I think that historically, any decadent self-absorbed society that is obsessed with status, wealth and celebrity is truly one that is on its last legs, and we should be very, very careful. Just look at the parallels with the last days of the Roman Empire and think about it. Maybe the barbarians aren’t quite at the gates yet, but they know where we live, and to be honest, I’m too old and too set in my ways to have to consider living in a new “dark age”.

So that’s where my weekend went. Before I know it, it’ll be next Monday. Blink again and it’ll be next year. Before I know it, I’ll be retiring (actually, that’s now becoming a less likely option). Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if all we had to show for the short time we get to spend on this Earth wasn’t just a great big pile of stuff that someone else will just have to throw away?

 “You remember him, don’t you?”

“What, that guy?”

“Yeah, the one with all the stuff.”

“Jerk!”