So, what does your regrettable lockdown purchase say about you? A study finds that households spent more than £6.6 billion on things they no longer use, the most commonly rued items being gaming equipment, tools, clothes and home gym kit. One adult in 20 bought a hot tub (ding dong!), and one in eight bought a musical instrument. Presumably, the neighbours of those one in eight bought a new house.
Being a consumerist drone, I am disappointed to reveal I score nearly a full house on capitalism bingo. In The Dark Times, I spaffed cash on a Nintendo Switch; a music stand for the saxophone I (still) haven’t played since 2009; a Nutribullet; a basketball; three yoga blocks; and clothing and shoes I have never worn, for a sartorial persona I have never possessed. Sequinned ankle boots? Who is she, and do you have the return slip to send her back?
It’s very chastening to learn you’re a basic bitch. (At least I wasn’t into sourdough.) Evidently, I have the interior life of an amoeba; most of my purchases are transparent and faddish. I bought the boots because I missed going out places that weren’t the prison yard/park next to my house; I bought a basketball because I’d just watched The Last Dance; and I bought the Nintendo Switch because I used to play my Gameboy Colour on long car journeys, and lockdown was basically the long car journey of the soul. The music stands speaks of a desire to better myself, although the fact it’s still in the box does not. In fact, each item slowly, quietly passed into disuse — or worse, no use at all. I am not alone; eight per cent of people never used the items they bought, and a further nine per cent did but do no longer. I could eBay them all, but who’d make my mistakes?
So while lockdown is a distant nightmare, the bad decisions hang around like ghouls. On an untidy day, (most of them) my one-bedroom flat — key feature: absence of storage — resembles a junkyard, or perhaps the den of a bouji hoarder. The music stand lives under the bed; the basketball, deflated, resides under the sofa. The boots I use as garish bookends. It is a shit hall of mirrors, round every corner a reflection of my weaknesses. For the greatest weakness of all is, of course, the waste! Greta would despair: I feel squeamish at the thought of all the pointless things gathering dust under my furniture. Next year I resolve to buy virtually nothing; my own personal COP is a disaster.
Not to mention our doorbell is (still) broken, and I think my neighbours still hate me for having to collect all the parcels. Perhaps splashing out (literally) on a hot tub might bring them around?
As flights to the US resume, I dream of a trip to New York
Once I’ve suitably offset my carbon footprint, I dream of a trip to New York. Flights to the US resumed yesterday and if the welcome I received in Paris last month is anything to go by, I hope they’ll roll the red carpet out.
Parisian waiters are usually hostile to the point of snarling; but last month, I found them politeness personified, fussing with extra bread and perfect seats in the weak October sunshine. One even sweetly complimented my French, which is how I knew they’d lost it.
But they’d so missed London tourists, they proclaimed! Certainly, it was a joy feeling like a minor royal, if only temporarily. So, will the famously irascible New Yorkers also have changed their tune? One way to find out (perhaps I could sail there instead of flying?).
Do you have any lockdown purchase regrets? Let us know in the comments below.
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