My non-consumerist self-image took a bit of a knock, after my impulse purchase of two recycled glass vases. One is turquoise, one dark green with brown streaks, and they are sitting on the dresser in the hall, where they co-ordinate nicely with the existing pottery. The pots on the top shelf are flanked by a bird nest at each end (I have sprayed them to kill any fleas), while the collection on the bottom shelf includes a wooden bowl turned by the Systems Administrator and filled with interesting bits of flint with holes in picked up by me, which gives the whole ensemble a 1960s vibe. I did not need any more vases.
I was back on form after reading the Telegraph's list of thirty gifts for foodies. Item one, an Alessi teabag squeezer, can be yours for fifteen of your earth pounds. It looks like a chrome shoe horn with the sides bent upwards. The idea is that you fish the teabag out of the tea using the fat end, then pull the bag through the narrow part to squeeze the tea out without dripping on the table. This presupposes that your tea bag has a string on it. For goodness sake, what's wrong with using a teaspoon like all normal people? Or brewing up in a tea pot?
The cookie cutters, in at number five, that allowed you to bake the components of a slot together 3-D dinosaur were briefly tempting, but then I thought that probably the biscuit mixture would spread slightly during cooking, and the pieces would not actually assemble, and a whole dinosaur would be more biscuit than any one person wanted to eat in one sitting, and the joke would wear off after about one go at making tyrannosaurus biscuits.
My anti-shopping stance was comprehensively restored after I'd had a look at the website of the (rather unattractively named) company supplying the biscuit cutters. Hands up who would like a light pull shaped like a large jelly baby, head drooping to one side, which you attach to the cord by looping the string around its neck as if it had been hanged. How droll is that? And why would anybody pay twenty pounds (twenty pounds! That is over three hours' work at the minimum wage) so that they can buy a decorated cardboard box for their cat to sit in? It is called a Cat Play House, a folded cardboard house for cats. You can choose between a brown one that looks like a giant bird box, or a small white teepee. Ye gods and little fishes. Our cats are perfectly happy with ordinary cardboard boxes, left over from Amazon deliveries, and I'm sure everyone else's cats would be the same. If you can't stand the sight of an old box in your hall then unleash your inner Blue Peter watcher and decorate it with wrapping paper or something. Or buy something decent quality that will last from OKA.
Meanwhile, the Royal Mail continues to make the postal experience less attractive than it could be. My recent credit card statement arrived looking as though it had been scrumpled up and roughly smoothed out, while my last Amazon order was taken to the Colchester sorting office because I was not at home to sign for it. The local post office would have been all right, or at least handy to get to. The full horror of running a small post office seems to be steadily draining the poor chap that manages it of the will to live, and he now sits slumped behind his glass window emanating such gloom that you need to brace yourself before calling in, and if already in a fragile emotional state had better not risk going at all.
The Eastgate sorting centre is not convenient. It is in Colchester, which is a round trip of about twelve miles from where I live, and it has no customer parking. I looked carefully on the way in and the way out, and all the car parks seemed to belong to one or another of the businesses on the estate, but not the Royal Mail. I parked half on the pavement and half on the double yellow line outside their door while I dashed in, and waited for an agonisingly long time, peering over my shoulder for traffic wardens, as the woman behind the counter could not find my parcel. She asked what it looked like, and I said I thought it was probably books. I didn't dare risk leaving the car any longer, and arranged for them to redeliver on Thursday. There no longer appears to be any set time for the post to arrive, so that potentially leaves me hanging around all day, but since it is the day the window company comes, I'll be around anyway.
Addendum I felt sorry for the two wolves which were shot after escaping from Colchester zoo. A spokesman said they had been shot because they had roamed too far from the zoo, and the anaesthetic darts took a quarter of an hour to be effective, but since they also said that the wolves were very shy and posed no risk to the public, why couldn't they just have darted them and followed them around for fifteen minutes, perhaps playing them a bit of heavy metal or the Ride of the Valkyries to encourage them to take cover, and warning members of the public to stand clear, then collected them safely once they'd gone under? Poor wolves.
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