The terrible price of a bargain

Happy new year, first of all. I hope everyone had fun getting smashed and setting themselves or other people's houses ablaze with fireworks.

So, what can I say about 2009? It's not 2008 or 2010, it's somewhere in between. It doesn't roll of the tongue quite as well as 2008 did, it actually requires articulation to be understood rather than 2008, which could be slurred and easily understood (rather helpful when drunk). Lots of stuff will happen this year, especially for me; I'll be leaving school finally, I'll have to adjust to whatever regional British accent I have to put up with, I'll have to struggle to make friends and influence people and I'll have to come to terms with the fact that my parents are actually more useful that I previously thought.

I got back from the UK a few days ago, and my god, what madness I experienced there, in that horrible, dark and soul-destroying world of the After-Christmas sales. I will never understand what exactly it is about sales that can turn even the sweetest old lady into THE INCREDIBLE HULK WITH A HANDBAG. I'm not kidding, by the time I managed to squeeze my way out of M&S in Birmingham, my ribs ached from how often I was elbowed around the shop. I wasn't even trying to browse (I hate Marks and Spencers and their old-women clothes), I was just elbowed while wandering aimlessly around the shop. Apparently on the opening day of the sales in the UK, there were countless reports of shoppers behaving less like humans and more like animals as they invaded shopping malls round the country. Considering the behaviour I saw when I was there, I can believe it. Even in M&S, there were clothes strewn on the floor that obviously had been picked up and deemed unsuitable for purchase by some permed middle-aged biddy and thrown to the ground in a flurry of coat hangers and tags. Spectacular, yet grossly disheartening at the same time. Sales, it has to be said, reduce the human race into rabid consumerist animals- like crack addicts desperate for that one quick fix- willing to do anything for something that costs just a few pounds less than before.

On the bright side, the areas of most shops that were not part of the sales were very quiet, so I managed to pick up some stuff. To be honest, I didn't see the point of venturing into the sales at all, as because of the current mess the British economy is in, the pound was worth much less compared to the euro, so everything was a bargain. Thank you America, thank you for the gift of brand new DVDs at 8 euros each!

One man's trash is another man's treasure

So my old friend caffeine races to the rescue on wings of ebony...

You'll have to forgive me, I'm slightly distracted today, and all this abstract 8-bit music isn't helping. I keep getting the urge to lock all the doors, close all the curtains and play Pokemon Yellow in the dark.

Speaking of Pokemon, I was charged with the mission of selling around 7 years worth of tat at a carboot sale at school yesterday. Talk about soul-destroying! 7 years of stuffed toys and children's board games that have never seen the light of day since we moved suddenly appeared from behind a cupboard in my bedroom and were placed under the unforgiving gazes of the Dutch. Now, not to be rascist, but the Dutch are not the most generous of nations, as a quickly found out when a grizzled, 70-something year old man repeatedly attempted to persuade me to lower the price of a bass guitar I was selling from 75 euros to 40. 40! I couldn't buy half a guitar for 40 euros, and to be honest, when I finally did sell it (for 80 euros to a man whose whole appearence and character screamed "I am a bassist") I was rather pleased to be able to shake my head in faux-sympthay and say "Sorry mate, sold it"... not that he understood me.

As the day dragged on, and me and my bemused parents realised that our increasing dribble of customers were not planning on doing anything other than tut our prices (reasonable prices, might I add), people started losing the will to live and started packing up, throwing all their unsold garbage into a skip. This was all well and good... until various people decided that it was a good idea to rummage in this skip for free goodies. OK, some of the people there seemed less than wealthy, in which case, fair play to them. However, some of the scavangers were just there for the sake of getting free stuff. One woman who bought a electric piano from us was happily rummaging in there for a good half hour... someone who can afford to buy a 30 euro piano doesn't need to grab second-hand stuffed toys. I'm not sure what was more frustrating; people just rummaging in there and running off with stuff that was only priced at 1 euro to begin with, or the fact it was almost exclusively my toys they were grabbing.

Any-hoo, my dad and a couple of other stall-holders got the idea into their heads that it would be fun to start smashing and maiming all the stuff about to be dumped into the skip, therefore halting the scavanging. So the standing on technology and glassware began. The technology part was especially fun, as much of the sales (and, in one case, a return) made were cameras, PDAs and memory cards, and I was a bit frustrated that I was never able to sell any of it because my Dutch is pretty poor. The glassware was, in hindsight, a bit dangerous- one woman cut her finger on a shard of glass while trying to perloin whatever it was in the box with it, but seeing as she also wasn't without money, I have less sympathy.

I feel that there should be a point to this post... but I can't really see one at the moment. Maybe it should be about the greediness of the wealthy members of humanity or something.

Oh yes, and about the presentation I was supposed to do last week; my memory stick doesn't seem to like OpenOffice documents, and decided it would be best to neglect the fact that I had saved my presentation on it, leaving me a gibbering wreck when trying to explain my misfortune to a Head of Year. Luckily I can do it another time, huzzah!

End of post.