Thinking a lot this week about Things and the stress they cause.
It's no secret that I hanker for a past that I never lived in. A lot of people would criticise me for that, and that's fine, they are probably right. But it seems to me there is so much that has gone wrong, and so much that has changed so much for the worse towards the end of the last century.
One of these things is how much we rely on and expect to own lots and lots of Things, and how these things break, get tatty, or get less reliable or efficient so that we have no choice other than to keep buying more and more Things. Nothing new here, but does no one else find this absolutely exasperating as well as deeply troubling? Not really a question, I know lots of people do.
We have had quite a lot of run-ins lately with things going wrong which has made the fact especially stark. We were away on holiday last week, but a couple of days before that our washing machine went on the fritz. We've only had it a couple of years. We bought it second hand, but reconditioned, it wasn't an old machine, and it wasn't cheap. The bearings were the issue so Will intended to replace them. When he called hotpoint now he found out that machines these days are built with a sealed tub as it is cheaper to manufacture. To replace the bearings you had to buy a whole new drum for £160. He spent some time on line and it looked like there was a long and complicated way of repairing it which involved sawing open the tub. He tried, it didn't work, we have had to buy a new (old) machine off gumtree.
As we know my phone is also broken and I am still procrastinating making a decision about it. I still don't really want one, but it is hard without one. I found this out yesterday when I was in ammanford (I popped out to buy bananas rather than just walk to the local shop - immense regret, that's what you get for being lazy), and Ivy dangled off of my car key and broke it. Meanwhile Will was out in Hirwaun collecting this washing machine but had gotten no response when he knocked on the door so was asking me to look up on an old, barely functional smart phone to find a phone number for this person. The phone died, I couldn't call Will back, I couldn't drive home to call him back because my car key was broken. I thought I would just flag someone down to use their phone but everyone was rushing around everywhere, and with two kiddies in tow it jus felt impossible. I asked in tescos - no, customers cannot use the phone. I asked in the charity shop - no, customers cannot use the phone. Eventually the chappie let me use his personal phone to call Will who was an hour away to say he needed to go back home to get the spare car key and bring it to me, but oh, I wouldn't know what time it was, and he couldn't ring me to meet me as I had no phone. So I went to the Tesco café to think, and asked to use their phone to call Will and ask him to meet me there. The woman looked at me like I had three head for about a minute before finally asking 'why?'. The obvious answer 'to make a call' only prompted more staring.
Anyway, it all ended fine but was very annoying and quite alarming at the time.
