Collector’s items

The lady at the opticians had a curious accent. It was not something I recognised. I had to know.
“Is that a New Zealand accent?” I asked her.
“No. I am from somewhere much further away.”
“Australia?”
“No no. Much much further away.”
“South Africa?”
“Now you are getting closer. Not South Africa though. But nearby.”
“Is it Botswana?” I was clutching at straws.
“No. I’ll give you a clue. My country looks like a teapot. Google it.”
So I discovered she is from Zimbabwe, and its map does resemble a teapot, if you can imagine a teapot without a handle.

So, I learned something new. As they say, the last thing you learn is how to stop breathing. This irresistible desire to learn, this incorrigible curiosity, keeps us going, I guess. In my case it also costs money.

I have been avoiding FB posts that entice me to spend money on new ideas. Only with partial success, I will admit. Just the other day, I purchased a device for sealing plastic bags. What a wonderful thing it is! Only the size of a stapler, it seals plastic bags and makes them completely airtight. A wonderful device, I thought and promptly purchased it. I went about sealing every open bag of food in the house. Cereals, savouries, nuts, biscuits … anything I found open, I sealed – until my wife started complaining.

“What’s wrong with clips or clothes pegs? Why don’t you just use those ziplock bags?”

And then I realised, I hadn’t thought it through. Well, the video on FB by MustHaveIdeas didn’t discuss these possibilities. They just showed me an iPhone that was sealed in a bag and dropped into the fish tank. That was enough for me.

I also purchased this clothes dryer that is a regular concertina type dryer but with electric heating. It dries clothes in half the time and consumes only 0.3kwh which is about 10p an hour. Instead of drying overnight, clothes dry in 4 to 5 hours. It’s even got a cover to conserve the heat. Great. The one question I didn’t ask myself was – what is the hurry? It is not as if we are running out of clothes!

Then there is the telescope that sits in our conservatory. It was received as a present from our son on the occasion of my wife’s big birthday. I am in charge of everything technical in the house and so I put it together, read the manual and lugged it to the open field nearby to look at the moon and planets like Mars, Venus, Saturn and others. Excellent. Mars was a little blob before. Through the telescope it is a bigger blob. Yes, the moon has many craters and Saturn has a faint ring. But so what? I can see much clearer images on Youtube and I don’t have to lug the heavy tripod with the heavier telescope and assemble everything, align and focus in the middle of the freezing night, in a desolate field. If I want to be really astronomical, I could even use an app on my phone and see all the planets above and below the horizon. If there were no clouds, I could actually see some of them with the naked eye. The telescope now sits forlorn in my conservatory occupying valuable space.

I have now decided not to be tempted by anything new. I have unfollowed MustHaveIdeas. Meanwhile, the magic whisk, the sealer, the dryer and a variety of other brilliantly useful things sit without use. They have become collector’s items – they collect dust.