eBabe

Unless you were shouting at your own children at the time, you quite possibly heard me roar “EIGHTEEN POUNDS!!!” last night, loud enough to bring tears to the ears of all in the vicinity.
Through some fuckwittery, where I had left the eBay account open while trying, unsuccessfully, to find a dog basket of all things (such cruel reward for attention to that hell-hound), F10 had scuttled on to the computer. While I was washing up, he, in his own words, had “got carried away.” With the consequence that we were the lucky winners (the term sticks in the craw) of a Match Attax card of some tosser of a football player. Cristiano Ronaldo possibly.

I’d gone upstairs to review dog basket options and so the first I knew of the other arm of our eBay activity was the cheery ping in the inbox and the enthusiastic announcement, “Congratulations, You are the current highest bidder …” At that innocent point, the bid sat at £12 which was enough to cause major freak-out. I'd look back on that halcyon amount with fond envy.

I thwacked off a panicky e-mail to the seller, trying to retract the bid.

Ping! Went the inbox. “Congratulations, You are the current highest bidder …” and the chilling climb to £14.50.
What all this was telling me, my frazzled brain worked out, was that some other dozy sod out there was actually bidding against me – aaargh, what am I saying, against me? against him!! Salvation lay in his desire edging crazily higher even than “ours.” The seconds were counting down in that way that thrills when the wondrous thing might just be yours and that horrifies when, well, when the wondrous thing might just be yours. Needless to say, Salvation failed to give a toss.

Every cheque we write seems to be for the children as it is without factoring in frenzied sessions on the computer. Shoes, piano lessons, piano exams (£43 for T12’s Grade 4, an exercise in stress I’m too near to to relate but will settle for reporting that it was All Alright On The Hour and a bad dress rehearsal need not mean curtains). Then there's ju jitsu, ju jitsu grading, karate, karate grading, clarinet lessons, residential trips, Robin the Bloody Storyteller coming to school for a bloody Workshop, football, rugby. A cheque for next year’s school bus sits on the side not quite written – well, at £740, would you? And then there are the cars, March bringing longer evenings but also both lots of insurance, tax, MOTs and services.
Somehow this eBay money held the full weight of the current financial crisis. Crisis and impotence in a demonic marriage. Cash in one way freeflow. The builders may have gone, but another set of gannets flocks in, hovering for scraps. The demands are endless.

I rang eBay, my fingers skittering like fat sausages over the tiny keys. The menu option enraged, as you can imagine, until I was put through to someone with the requisite scant English who insisted on reading the full Welcome guff. We tussled through the conversation, my half being frantic to convey “retract! retract! retract!” his centring tiresomely on “username” and “postcode” and “first line of address”. Somewhere around here, E had to be dug out to “give permission” (God, I hate data protection) for me to speak to eBay which was an irritating irony and nothing but a time-spinner. For somewhere else around here, the bidding closed and we were merrily informed by eBay that the closing amount was £18. Plus 99p post and packing. Congratulations!
I flipped.

The seller woke up, now that it was all too late, and sent a barely literate response to mine littered with meaningless "...."s. Are these indicating thinking time, surely not; who knows:

“i have no right to remove it, this system is contorlled by ebay. i will ask bidder 2 whether he wants it. if he do not want it....you may be have to pay or you can contact ebay...because i have to pay the final value fee to ebay, i do not want to lose money....”

Yeah, right, lose money. Bless. Needless to say my reply featured more syllables, relentlessly middle-class to the end, Full Sentences R Us. Fighting an urge to scream, “lose money, you greedy bag! You’re getting £18.99 for an outlay of 40p, a stamp and an envelope, all because I was stupid enough to think the dog needed a new bed.” I sounded instead contrite and grateful for whatever help she could give me.

F10 was on the floor. He had rummaged in his money box and prised out a Christmas twenty which he forced on me.
He sobbed.
“I got carried away,” he said again, “I feel so ashamed.”
What can you do to a response like that but say, “It doesn’t matter. It’s only money.”
It’d better be a shit-hot card though.

that'll do nicely

The race-goers peppering the village are as recognisable to locals as plain clothes policemen are to TV low life. It’s a roundness of tum, a certain kind of tie, a slope of shoulder (similar to my avatar) indicative of too much time spent hunched over the Racing Post. That, and a proliferation of Bentleys, and the fact that the skies have been alive with the sound of … choppers. For this is Gold Cup week and despite fewer helicopters than of yore, the rich are still at play (no silly banks to go to, sigh). Today, even the Queen’s due to pop in, bless her.
Every denizen in the geographical fallout of Cheltenham Racecourse is out to fleece the racers somehow. Friends do B&B and count the cash. Cheltonians go on cruises for Christmas, or are half-way to China, on the proceeds. Driveways are dusted off and called car parks; limos fill lay-bys; opening hours are rapidly extended: normal old breakfasts at cafes are called Racing Breakfasts, and charged accordingly. Everything, temporarily, becomes Gold this or Racing That.
It might add a buzz, but if you’re not profitting from it, you’re buggered by it and traffic means that we are effectively marooned this side of Chelters. It’s not that I would normally want to go, but now that I can’t, I feel aggrieved: even a Country Liter has shopping needs to meet. So I went just now, fool that I am, to the Post Office, to stalk out a few creme eggs and get in some Match Attax (sic) cards. Don’t tell me my education’s been wasted.
A string of racegoers were aimlessly wandering around the shop – tum, porkpie hat, tie, debris of disgusting breakfast festering in the café corner (don’t ask).

Post Office Man was – his words – “made up.” “All that booze they buy!” he hissed confidentially, “Each night! We get more in.” He did that pursed lips kissing the window thing he favours when making a point.Such is the mighty power of his whisper, so much more audible than the normal ebb and flow of his disappointed speech, that every race goer’s head turned to eyeball him.

I gave a stiff dead smile, cringed, and turned my best, dim, Lolly-like attention to the chocolate stand.He shook his head at the giddy commerce of it all. The thrill of the till, clanging shut on crisp Irish twenties (not village 20ps grudgingly counted out); the unexpected extra visits to the Cash & Carry; the sheer enterprise represented. He nodded a reproving nod at me and bounced off to tidy his bafflingly large birthday card racks, as if now jostling for Richard Branson’s place on The Rich List.
Witness to POM’s idea of self as successful entrepreneur, not washed-up weirdo with a penchant for driving ducks to Spain was not something I wanted to be.

I prowled around the tatty bit normally frequented by 10 year olds, where the Match Attax cards should be … but weren’t. POM has no idea of supplying to meet a demand, hence his unfathomable interest in the wrong sorts of cards, endless birthday ones. Profits lie instead in the greedy, shifting, desires of 10 year olds (and their desperate parents, eager for behaviour/treat leverage). Greasy cards shuffled fervently in grubby little hands, mini book-makers in the making, every one of them. We are all fluent in Italian midfielders.

Having made the effort to trudge across the road, and risk the conversational ambush of an encounter with POM, to be then denied my reason for being there was just outrageous.
“Still not in, national shortage,” POM said with something approaching pleasure in his voice. He’s moved on from locals, he hobnobs with race-goers now. “’ve been up since four,” he purred at one in a trilby, “No time for sleeping. Not in this game.”

Mrs POM, a study in defeat, was kept busy, the long minutes I was in there, debating the minutiae of a paper bill with a pensioner whose gloved hand was determined to remain triumphantly clasped round coppers. The paperboy – “he always walks on the grass!” – was being ripped to shreds.

It is a fearful thing the village Stores’n’Post Office being held afloat so arbitrarily, and by one who never sleeps. Post Office work, with its stingy pay off per “swipe,” brings something like £2.50 an hour. The many many greetings cards remain unsold, testament to a plan gone sour.
The Match Attax cards meanwhile might retail at a mere 40p a pack, but they disappear under the locust swarm of small children’s hands. Blink and they’ve gone. At the moment, they’re gone. And, with the imminent defection of the racers, if the national shortage continues, married to that capricious whim of fickle children whose interest in the cards will melt like butter in the sun the day his mis-judged double order comes in, then it could be Bye Bye Post Office.
Not for nothing did my boss call me Cassandra. Doomed ever to tell the truth but never to be heeded.

It’s a bit like musical chairs. Round of cuts: remove a chair: close a branch; take the big utilities from the Post Office: profits fall; remove a chair: close a branch.
We’ve survived the random chair removal so far, and our little sub-branch is still here. Match Attax could be the only thing standing between him and disaster. Feeling suddenly mean for laughing at his dreams, his misguidedly heavy investment in greetings cards, and being Queen of the Unnecessary Purchase, I grabbed indiscriminately at some over-priced rice to buy pro tem and scarpered.
“They’re on order,” he added wistfully, as the door clanged to.

2 years ago, it was Dr Who cards, another tense time with fluctuating availability. Then we had to stump out £1.50 for a mere 9 cards. I'm sure POM has a job lot out the back from when the demand plummeted.
Times change, and there’s nothing you can tell me about value for money.
Lolly is back to full prance and, I’m glad to report, the bill was small, meaning that it’s worth having a stern word with vets. I almost tipped her in my gratitude. Almost. Silly to give her any ideas.
For:
an 8 hour stay on the day of reckoning, including (shudder), shaving, draining, pus collection, leak-seepage management, keeping an eye on
a course of antibiotics
a new yellow squadgy lead
2 follow up appointments (admittedly brief, but one of them involving 2 vets)
I was charged ….… £35.08.
Even I couldn’t baulk at that.

Indeed I’ve been recommending them all week so their portals will soon be bursting with skinflints bearing maimed pets.