A modified expression of which I am particularly fond is, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t carry it. All around thieves and bounders are treating us no better than idiots but just you try and kick them off, or warn someone else, all you’ll get for your trouble is an uppity bluster and a what-makes-you-so-goddamn-different neck wind.
Nothing makes me different unless you count not wanting to be misled or ripped off, which I don’t. Many people work awfully hard which makes me sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t want to see the fruits of my labour frittered and wasted in an offhand way. So why do we let it happen? Why do we believe that a half price bottle of wine on a supermarket shelf, for example, was ever meant to be sold at anything other than that price? Most of that shit is terrible and we’re all buying it up like it’s the goddamn nectar of the gods.
Stand on a high street anywhere in the country and look left and right, see the gaudy and frankly insincere statements of value. What’s real and what’s really going on? You have to take some time to look, to see where the value lies, or doesn’t, as the case may be. In a business plan, for example, key personnel are named, those who bring the experience and skills that customers actually buy into. We pay the young lads who occasionally babysit over the going rate, because their mum is a health visitor. In other words we pay a premium for the hotline to the mum, you don’t see her but she’s the point of value to us. Not that her sons aren’t great guys, they’re just young that's all.
I think of the welder who charged me extra to do some work on my car because the bit that needed welding was near the fuel tank, which would have to come out due to the fire risk. After the job I looked under the car and found the mounting bolts, untouched, caked in mud. I confronted him and found he’d packed the area around with wet sand done the welding and charged me the full whack anyway. I can see where the value in the process was, for him, but he lied and overcharged me which was a bum deal and made me really angry.
I don’t know about you but I’m sick of being everybody else’s meal ticket, especially dickheads like him. I don’t want your shitty wine, your premium clothing brands, cheerless ready meals, overpriced goddamn Peruvian asparagus, rip off telephone tariffs, pointless mass produced gadgets or any other so-called necessities. I want honest stuff that does what it says, has nothing to hide, lasts the distance, can be repaired and doesn’t mess unduly with the environment.
Wine openers, for example, unless you’re unable to physically pull the cork from a bottle, what’s with all the chrome and the levers and the compressed gas and all that? The value in a corkscrew is the screw, it should be sharp and strong but above all thin, so it doesn’t expand the cork in the neck of the bottle, making the job more difficult. It should be circular or oval in section so it doesn’t cut the cork and preferably have a hardwood handle that lasts forever and burnishes with age. A simple tool for a simple job, something you might one day hear someone in your kitchen calling ‘trusty’.
Perhaps ‘trusty’ can be prefixed to things to see if they have what it takes; my trusty Armani jeans – hmm, you see, doesn’t sound right. Your trusty Samsung Galaxy – doesn’t do it for me. A trusty bottle of English wine – oh, don’t make me puke. The Black Bullet on the other hand is a trusty old bike. A good pair of stout boots, recently waxed, are trusty, as is a well maintained set of quality tools.
More than being simply useful, trusty things bring pleasure just from being there, hanging on a hook, waiting to be used. If you’re going to be around this stuff, go for the stuff that makes you feel good as well as being useful, even if you have to save to get it. You'll never regret it.
