Tag: hoarding

The Secret Of The Hoarder

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Today is a day of necessity. It turns out I’m a little bit of a collector of stuff. As I said yesterday I appear to have acquired more stuff this year. The famous George Carlin joke is pretty apt here as since I’ve had a place of my own it has just meant I now have more space for more stuff. This necessity then involves effort and a new type of discipline. What makes today necessary and disciplined is that it’s the day I pack up my stuff and clean the flat. Packing also appears to mean throwing out. I’m not very good at throwing out.

Many years ago now when I was travelling around Australia I had an old Toyota Corolla 1986. I loved her and we shared twenty thousand miles together. I cried a little when I gave her away, my ex girlfriend who I gave it to thought it was over her, I never had the heart to tell her the truth. It was the same story then as now, I had upgraded from a rucksack and was able to use the excess space for more stuff. When I finally left the country after fourteen months I had the unenviable task of emptying and ‘cleaning’ my car. My friends managed to get some really random and cool things I had sniffed out and acquired over the time but I managed to hold on to a few things of importance. One thing I like to mention, and use as an example of why being a hoarder is a valuable trait, were about three or four bungee cords I had picked up at some point but never used and which had lived in the boot of my car the majority of the trip. As I packed everything I could into a rucksack I managed to find space for these bungee cords. It wasn’t as I said because they were a daily necessity in my life but I just knew they would be important one day. Two years later I found myself cycling from Amsterdam to Berlin with a pile of ‘useful’ stuff attached to the back of my bike. How did I attach them I hear you ask, those very bungee cords of course. They came in handy, I knew they always would. And that is the secret of the hoarder.

It is simply the ability to look at something and recognise it’s potential value at a later date. We hardly need much use for things in the moment unless we’re doing something specific but we don’t know what the future holds either. If you can see the potential value in something why would you turn it down or not pick it up. I call it a form of foresight, or maybe it is just straight up foresight.

Today though I need to be strict with myself. It’s Australia all over again but this time I don’t simply have a bag to restrict my worst tendencies, I have the knowledge there’s space in my long suffering parents attic. While in Australia I had to contend with the difficult decision of giving away what was unquestionably the best oilskin sleeping bag I had ever used, especially difficult as I had found it in a black bin bag in the middle of the road. While others drove around I stopped for a look. Now I’m left with decisions at the level of whether I should bother keeping the three black marker pens I’ve never used but might, although probably won’t, especially as I already have a few somewhere in the attic from a previous occasion. I should donate them to someone. I admire minimalists. I think they see the world in a different way through very different eyes. I wonder what they do when they need a set of bungee cords. Surely they have a secret box of stuff somewhere. Like a perversion they keep to themselves.

Coronavirus Shopping News

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Go on, admit it, who panicked back there for a little? Buy too much toilet roll did you? How about all those bags of porridge oats you heard were nutritious and would last a long time? What on earth are you going to do with all those tins of kidney beans, you don’t even like kidney beans. How did that baking bread mission go, bored of the effort yet? It’s great being able to take the moral high ground and call people out for being pricks.

I saw something online earlier that some councillor in Derby had posted showing bins full of food people had dumped because they had bought too much and it had good bad. Loaves of bread, chicken, vegetables, that type of thing. There was what appeared to be a carefully placed bunch of bananas at the top of one pile though yet the bananas looked fresh, not a speck of aged brown on them, eerily similar to the standard I bought earlier today actually. The skeptical monster in me went into overdrive, my bullshitometre when wild with excitement as I realised the whole thing stunk of set up. The game given away by someone trying just too hard to make the food waste look unjustifiable. I don’t care what you say, nobody throws away a fresh bunch of bananas.

I must confess that in all the panic I did buy two things in bulk, three actually if you count that I now have two kilos of peanut butter and one of cashew nut butter. I must stress though that I eat that stuff normally, and found it strange that in all the panic with empty shelves everywhere, there were loads of tubs of inexpensive pure peanut butters which are a great source of protein and fats. How many times, you can’t live off toilet roll and tinned tomatoes. Actually four things if you count the three tins of sardines I bought thinking it was mackerel, three tins which might find themselves donated to a food bank it’s worth adding.

I bought about three months supply of multivitamins, vitamin c and probiotics just incase it does all go tits up and I’m living on stale bread and water for a bit, also to keep me healthy with virus’ going around of course. I bought thirty kilograms of dog food for my little darling too. People didn’t seem to mention pets in all of this chaos but what happens if the food supply dries up and we run out of pet food, do we start giving them people food when we’re hungry ourselves? Well to avoid that conundrum I now have a back up of three to four months worth of food for her. I may not have rushed out for myself but at least my dog won’t go hungry. It’s amazing the lengths we’ll go to when we find someone or something to love.

But the madness seems to have calmed. The shelves are full and now people only look suspiciously at each other looking for signs of potential illness. I saw a great moment in the queue for the check out though when a woman reminded the couple behind her that they should be keeping a distance of two metres. The man just suggested she simply move forward to create it oblivious to the fact that she would then be less than the two metres from whoever was in front of her. People are a constant source of entertainment. I bet she got about two days worth of excitement from retelling that story.

How To Be Human In The Zombie Apocalypse

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Coronavirus panic seems to have ramped up to zombie apocalypse levels. I have not been able to resist keeping an eye on the latest news updates online and we seem to just be seeing photo’s of empty shelves and pandemonium everywhere. Apparently everyone is being selfish and one Tweet from some politician told of some guy buying the last of the pasta and refusing to share even one with some old lady. This would seem to prove the existence of widespread selfish behaviour, or at least prove examples of it exist and therefore the selfish narrative if you’re attempting to push one. I of course wasn’t there and haven’t been to a big supermarket in about ten days when I went to buy some goats milk butter, I’m so middle class, because they don’t have it in my local shop. Unsurprisingly there had not been a rush on it although I can confirm there wasn’t a great deal of toilet paper left, it does appear people think they can eat it. Seriously though of all the things to rush to buy, the one thing people think they can’t survive without is loo roll? In times of emergency I reckon you’ll get used to Indian style pretty quickly.

But back to this arsehole hoarding the pasta. If true I would love to know the bigger picture. Did he finally give her some? Did someone step in and persuade him to share? Or even force him to share? There are videos online of people fighting over toilet roll, imagine how it’ll be when it’s over the last tin of baked beans. I wonder what I would do in that situation, would I be a coward or would I stand up for the old lady, and would I give up or persevere. I doubt people really know beyond the fantasy of their imagination but I’m sure we all hope we would one way or another have managed to get the old lady her pasta.

Other updates in the ensuing apocalypse are that a raft of rather disagreeable world leaders seem to be getting tested. It’s a tricky one and I wonder how our public sentiments on these issues vary from our inner thoughts. Scumbags like Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have tested positive, do we respond joyfully, neutrally or compassionately for him as a human being (supposedly). The Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative, do we admit to a little disappointment? And then there’s the big one, The Donald has taken his test and will find out in a day or two. We are only human, are we at sainthood levels when we can react equally to everyone in the public eye getting tested? At what point do we just admit our response to hearing Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive was not the same as when we heard Donald Trump is being tested. Does that make us bad? They are still humans, they are still someones mother or father despite how disconnected from any concept of an emotional bond we imagine they have. But we’re also human so we’re fallible. That also means if we want to be excused for our own fallibility we may just have to try understand and excuse theirs. Or just continue being fallible, and proving how human we are.

Saying all of this, it won’t matter anyway soon. We’re all going to be deep in a zombie apocalypse as people prove the fragility of society. Proving they have no sense at all of the so called community they think they’re fighting for with guns or the ballot box. It’s depressing when you realise just how shit people not are but can be. I really hope that old lady got her pasta and whoever reported the moment didn’t just stand there and take a video of it on their phone. To miss the point of ones very own judgemental reporting. Ah to be human.