STUFF AND NONSENSE

I'm so sorry, but I've been buying "stuff" again. In these austere times, I really ought not to, and I certainly ought not to bleat on about it when so many people haven't got two brass farthings to rub together, but I'm weak, I'm feeble, and I don't spend my hard-earned on beer or fags or whisky or narcotics. No, my addiction is to passive entertainments, and it's far more weird given the lack of ultimate pleasure I get out of it once the thrill of the hunt, and perhaps of the delivery, has passed.

I know that I order far too much shiny rubbish via the internet, just as I know that most of the films will be watched once, the CDs played once and the books, maybe, read once, unless they're all stacked up in a pile somewhere to be read "later", in which case, "later" could turn out to be perhaps "never" given how my limited span upon this Earth is slipping away so rapidly.

Most of the time, the things that I'm deciding that I really simply have to have in my nasty, brutal and short life, are cheap enough, and presumably disposable enough, that they don't cause much in the way of fiscal hardship. Individually at least, they're all cheap enough not to cause too huge a dent in the precarious finances of our little household.

Collectively, however...

However, last Monday, four (yes, I said four), separate items got dispatched on the very same day and suddenly those four individually tiny sums suddenly felt like they'd been consolidated into one large wadge of cash, not helped by the fact that each of the four had been individually pre-ordered in each of four distinct and separate months and had only been brought together by the shifting plate tectonics of circumstance and fluidity of release dates. In my head they remained far enough apart not to trouble the scorers, but in reality, the fiscal piranhas are feasting as one at my bank balance.

Not only that but, because of an exciting new packaging policy, instead of each tiny item being able to slip neatly through the letterbox here at Blogfordshire Towers, they will have been bundled together into one large and "slot unfriendly" parcel which will mean the coming of another of those much-feared red cards, and another trek over to the far and distant place which is now our "local" Post Office to go and pick it up.

This actually occurred far more rapidly than expected, actually, with the whole stonking lot turning up the day after despatch which is, quite frankly, unheard of in my penny-pinching "Super Saver Delivery Option" lifestyle of choice, where the twitchiness of non-manifestation often goes on at least one day beyond my tolerance levels.

And then there's also the slightly galling knowledge that, by the time I do get around to watching my nice shiny new films, the price will most probably have dropped to about a third of what I paid for them by ordering them for distribution on or about the release date, even though I'll normally spot them cheaper in one of the supermarkets anyway long before the parcel finally gets into my actual house and I'm getting (quite rightly) scowled at for buying more tat and whilst I'm still in the "It hasn't turned up yet" zone...

So that's a bit of a "lose-lose" then...

The fact that two of the items are meant as gifts, and the other two are merely fulfilling my need to attain completion of a collection which has been building for decades, should and will cut no ice. It's still basically rubbish that we don't really need, even if I would miss it so if it wasn't there...?

After all, does anyone ever slip away off this mortal coil just wishing that they'd bought more stuff...?

This continual acquisition of "stuff" has become a bit of an "issue" lately as we look around our tiny little house and realise that it's got far too much "stuff" in it, and so the accumulation of more of it seems ridiculous, especially given that the number of remaining available years in which to read, watch or listen to them all feels as if it's diminishing rapidly.

Look... I know it myself, if I'm being totally honest with you.

I'm weak...

I'm feeble...

I'm surrounded by far too much tat...

I'm expecting an "Intervention" any day now (not that anyone's actually interested enough in my well-being to actually stage an Intervention, I'm sure...) or at least a quiet suggestion that I head off to a meeting of "Tat Buyers Anonymous..."

Meeting TBA...