bad things I spent good money on this year

Since this newsletter has mostly become irregular bulletins about things I’ve bought and enjoyed, I thought it might be useful to write about some stupid shit I bought this year that I hate. When I say ‘useful’, I don’t mean that it will be useful to you, the reader. This is meant only to be useful to me, the person who spent the money and needs this feeling of injustice and rage to lift somehow.

Tomato candle

I used to think I was my own person, but this year I’ve had to take a step back and look at my life and realise that my interests are the interests of a Mother’s Day Gift Guide from 2004. I like baths, and I like candles, and I like sitting in my baths with my candles. Winter is good for candles because they can be lovely winter flavours like 'amber’ and ‘wood’ and ‘the blood of an ancient ram, shimmering wildly in the moonlight’. A spring/summer candle is harder to find, so that’s why I thought I’d try ‘tomato’.

What I imagined: a breezy, sunlit picnic on a red check blanket; my lover taking me firmly in his hands; the gentle blossoming of girl to woman

What I got: hot, hot bile. The acrid stench of a festering empire. The opening of a black bin that you thought had been emptied but the bin men won’t empty it because someone (I see you, Flat 4!!!) threw garden waste in there.

Rechargeable mushroom lamp

You know the deal. Not enough plugs, are there. But what’s this – a lamp you can charge? No plugs, no wires, no muss, no fuss? A lamp you can read by, no matter where in the house you are?

No. Sorry. This dream is dust. The rechargeable lamp offers only the dim light of a torchbug’s last day on earth. Only bad squinting as the charge on the rechargeable lamp fades, and Bob Cratchit begs Scrooge for one more coal scuttle for the fire.

I lost the charger almost instantly, now it just sits there, staring at me, a horrible blue chode.

The brand, Sézane

Alright, now we’re cooking with gas. Now we’re naming and shaming. Look, maybe this French weekend-wear clothing brand works for you. Maybe your proportions are right, maybe your personal style is at the exact midpoint between smart-casual and casually-rich. But everything I’ve bought from Sézane either hasn’t fitted properly or hasn’t turned up. I bought a velvet two piece suit that was so badly tailored that it felt like absurd pyjamas; I bought a pair of high-waisted jeans that I can’t sit down in; I bought a pair of shoes that vanished somewhere around Dover. Maybe everyone has their ‘treat’ brand, and maybe mine is Reformation. Maybe it’s good to only have one treat brand at a time, so you can still afford the mortgage.

Ruggable rugs

“A rug you can put in your washing machine!” Right, yeah, great idea, but think about it for a second. Do you really want to stand on a rug that you can fit in your washing machine? Do you really want others to stand on it? It’s just so flimsy. Whenever someone stands on my Ruggable rug I feel like my life is a doll house I made from a shoebox.

JeeMooTown T shirt Organiser

Just what did I think was going to happen? That 12 square pieces of plastic would change my relationship to t-shirts forever? Here is what happens: when my endless array of white-tshirts-with-a-novelty-design-on get too disorganised, I lay each of them on the t-shirt organiser, and then they’re all stacked on top of one another neatly, like a t-shirt lasagne. Then: I forget they are there. I forget about my Agatha Christie t-shirt, and my ROY! t-shirt, and my Brian Eno t-shirt. I forget about every single shirt in the shirt lasagne. And that’s a real shame, it being layering season.

Hollyland Lark M1 Wireless Lavalier Microphone

Something I say a lot in my household is: “I think I have a metal plate in my head.” Actually, no. What I really say is: “I think I have A FUCKING METAL PLATE IN MY FUCKING HEAD.”

I say this because, from what I know about metal plates in heads, they sometimes make technology go wacky around the metal plate haver. Almost all new technology makes me feel frustrated, and that frustration makes me feel stupid, and I was told I was stupid perhaps too often as a young person, and by teachers who should have known better. So when I can’t make something work, I don’t feel inconvenienced, I feel personally attacked. I feel as though the real world isn’t for me. I feel like every success I’ve experienced in my life comes from a combination of luck and greasy-minded cunning.

I wouldn’t have to deal with this feeling so often if I wasn’t a podcaster, a profession that involves some amount of tech. And I’ve mastered quite a lot of it! I edit all my podcasts myself, so I like to call myself a woman in STEM.

But the Hollyland? Oh man, the Hollyland. What a piece of shit this thing is. I bought it to record Continental Garbage, the travel series I did with my friend Jen Cownie this summer. First the mics wouldn’t connect to my phone. Then it would connect, but only one microphone. I got Gavin to help. I got my assistant, Meg, to help. No joy. There was no information online about how to fix it, just a billion paid Youtube videos about how it was ‘so convenient’ to use.

Imagine this: you believe yourself to be stupid. You believe yourself to have a metal plate in your head. You are going travelling in one week and you need your podcasting microphones to work. You spend a frankly huge amount of time thinking about the French teacher who struck a line through your vocabulary test because you had ‘obviously cheated’ in order to get 19 out of 20 right. And now: your podcast microphones won’t work. The internet is awash with bearded men in black tshirts, all of them professional content creators, all of them reminding you to like and subscribe. All saying that this thing you bought, this thing you can’t work, is SO EASY to use.

Am I supposed to just NOT flip out about that?

Listen. If you’re thinking about getting into podcasting, these mics will probably be advertised to you. And you will think of getting them, because they are half the price of the Rode Wireless Go II, which is a very similar kind of product. Please, I beg you. Get the Rode Wireless Go II instead. They are magical and actually easy to use. Most importantly, they don’t irritate the metal plate.

Benebone Indestructible Dog Chew Toy for Aggressive Chewers

Abandoned instantly when my dog realised they really were indestructible. She looked at me like, well where’s the fun in that? And I realised, oh, it’s not just chewing you’re into. It’s the wearing away of a thing. It’s the accomplishment that comes from turning something solid into mush. God bless her? She has no hobbies, she can’t read, and when we leave her alone for an afternoon the only thing there is to do is sleep or vanish a bone into the oblivion of her gut.

Get your dog a fresh bone from the butcher’s instead. It’s a really nice thing to do, to ask a butcher for a dog bone, provided you’re buying some other stuff as well. Every time I feel like I’m in a picture book, a character who is revealed when you lift a cardboard flap. There’s the woman. There’s her dog.

I keep a bunch frozen for days when it’s too rainy for her to walk outside, and she spends all day thawing them with her tongue and then whittling them down to nothing with her teeth. There are few purchases left in this world where you can buy them and then they disappear. Even broccoli has plastic wrapping now. Of all the money I’ve wasted over the course of this newsletter, it’s nice to know I can still make one good purchase, and that it only costs one pound, and that one pound will give my dog a day’s worth of happiness. We’ve got that, at least.