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Sometimes I think the old days were simpler.
I have to point out, to be fair, I was born in the late seventies. This is not going to be a 'things were better in the war' post. My childhood, on a scale of one to ten, if judged with an unbiased eye, would probably rank in at about five. I wasn't chewing lead paint off my cot, at the same time I was probably lucky to have one. It wasn't brilliant, it's not entirely stuffed full of sunshine and buttercups memories, but everyone else with mediocre childhoods has already jumped on the misery market so this is more of a contextual annotation rather than an expunging of my soul.
However, I still think the old days were simpler.
When I was in secondary school, our computer class consisted of how to make a very clumsy piece of software print out a dot matrix banner picture. I remember hearing about the Internet and thinking, wow, if only I could have but half an hour a week, think of how much I could learn. I didn't see a mobile phone until I was about 18. My first computer gaming experience at a friend's house was playing Fletcher's Castle on a BBC. We had, if we were lucky and it wasn't raining or too windy, a maximum of four watchable TV channels and a fifth that was full of static; all of which only broadcast until a certain time of night, after which there was indeed nothing on. I had a filing box full of old 45 rpm records that I got from a secondhand store and a couple of storage cases full of cassettes. Cutting edge technology was recording a mixed tape from the radio.
I once owned, and it was the pride and joy of my life until it got nicked by my thieving relatives (and I use the word relatives loosely) the 7 inch green vinyl single of U2's Hold Me Kiss Me Thrill Me Kill Me. Wikipedia just told me that particular single was released in 1995. I feel an inch older than I did before I knew that.
The laptop I am working on is a 4 year old Dell Inspiron 9400. My current gripes with it are that 1 - it only has one internal hard drive, 2 - it has enough welly to run World of Warcraft in medium mode but creaks and dies if I try to play GTAIV, and 3 - the battery life is lousy because I often end up running it from the mains all the time. It is, in my defence for this last, my only main computer. We gave up desktops just after Little One was born and we started to need more room in the house... When I only had access to my friend's BBC, it was the best thing in the world, full stop.
I have too much music. It's all digital. I have something like 2000 tracks now and it has gotten to the point where I have to delete some of it in order to get it all on my whopping billion gig mp3 player. If I want radio, without even touching the stereo system in the front room, I have all the online radio feeds to pick from, and that's before I even think about hybrids like Last FM and podcasts.
Missed something on TV? No more rifling through the TV guide to find when the repeat is on, or struggling to set the video recorder to get the right time if we are out. I remember when it was cool to record something off the tele in 'long play' mode. If it's not already on 'catch up on demand' on the VBox then it's bound to be on iPlayer or some such. Or it will be on endless repeat on DAVE. Don't even get me started on the possibility of Bittorrenting missed episodes. If it's a movie that's been missed and it's out on DVD, no wait, sorry, we're up to Bluray now, well, we have a Lovefilm subscription, it can be popped through our letterbox in two days if the post is late. We can keep it as long as we like, no more get that video back to the rental shop by 5pm, just stick in the freepost envelope when we're done and away it goes. No fuss, easy peasy.
Mobile phones. My current particular thorn in the side. I remember being so delighted when I got my first third generation mobile phone. It had colour and could play polyphonic ringtones. At the moment I have just settled down to a new contract with o2, sim only so I can pick and choose what phone I want. I inherited an unused Nokia N95 and I'm not enjoying the experience. The battery life is so dire I don't dare make any calls from it if I want to be around for urgent texts on the way home from work. It's a bit thick. At a whopping 21 mm in depth, it feels like a brick in my pocket.
Now. All I want is a flip or slide phone, that I can Facebook and web from, that has a decent camera and an alarm clock setting. It needs to cost about or under £80, which is the recycling value I can get out of the N95 if I'm lucky. I'm on o2 so it needs to be locked to 02 or unlocked totally. Must Have Good Battery Life. With the massive choice available on the market, both new and secondhand, after an entire week of looking, I have narrowed it down to a list of about eight possibles. EIGHT! And that's not including the Palm Pre, which is absolutely out of my price range...
Tomorrow we have friends coming for lunch. This means a trip to Asda where I get to worry about choosing the right type of green salad. I also forgot to ask if they have any milk requirements, it is such a social faux pas to make a cup of tea only to hear the words 'I tend to drink skimmed these days... but it's ok if you're out.'
Don't even get me started on the choice making processes required in being a parent of a Small and Exceedingly Bright Child. Nappies? Pull up pants? Disposable? Reusable? How do you come to a decision about which buggy to buy for your child... no wait, first you have to decide buggy or stroller or travel system or pram! Squash or diluted fruit juice or milk or or or or or or or or or
I am, in an age of consumerism and a flavour for everything, completely paralysed by indecision. I should be feeling empowered. Instead at best I feel jaded and at worst panicked.
I think things were easier when there was less choice.
Today a nice man (hello E.H.) came to my house to pick up some unwanted clutter that he could make use of rather than allowing me to undergo the ordeal of a trek out to our local WEE recycling site.
Having seen my email address, and clearly being savvy enough to actually go look at the originating domain of the email address, he said; "Is that your blog?" and I rather confusedly said yes, having temporarily forgotten that people can actually bother to look at the originating domain of the email, and he said words to the effect that I ought to get on and post on it, because it looked as though it was going to be good.
Seeing as I had only gotten the bones of the structure up (and was still mentally obsessing about the skin choice) I was a bit flattered by this comment and clearly motivated since here is a post, a proper post and not a disclaimer or explanatory statement.
So I thought that I would start with the concept of giving away unwanted stuff to people who do want it, rather than sticking it in the bin.
I would have headed this post 'All about Freecycle' but there's a problem with Freecycle in the UK. The Guardian stated it quite nicely here, (link opens in a new window), and it appears that Canada had previously suffered the same problems. Ultimately it appears that the Freecycle moderation in America sought to hold on to their grass-roots movement, something that they had developed for the good of the community, by trying to keep such tight hold of their rights that they did not wish individuals to refer to themselves as a Freecycler.
Seems a bit odd. After all, Hoover don't threaten to sue me every time I say 'I hoovered the house today' even though I own a non-Hoover brand of vacuum cleaner. Surely Freecycle should have been delighted to become so associated with the trend of giving away the stuff you no longer want or need that they became The Brand Name in that area.
Anyway, my Freecycle group became a Freegle group.
It's the same thing, but with less red tape. Or so I'm told.
Ultimately, it is an email list where you post up the things you want to get rid of. Usually these are things that don't have a lot of retail value - we Freegle the bits of furniture that get rotated out as our whole house refurbishment continues gently along, but we eBay the Sky HD box, as an example. The things that are just a bit too tatty to put a price on, that are too tiresome to write up a listing for, that you just don't like the colour of any more, but in fact are still of use.
Sometimes the trend can seem a bit one sided. Between Freecycle and Freegle over the last three years we have given away an awful lot, up to and including £200 worth of reusable nappies, given away with a good heart and clear conscience in two instalments to two different families. In return we have received a handful of baby things when Little One was much younger, a bag of toys, a slightly damaged canvas scout tent that reeked of mildew until we aired it at the allotment for several months and... well, that's about it, really. There have been a couple of things that I've put in a request for that I really regret not being the recipient of: the large Ikea rug is the most memorable. There have been more than several things that I have asked for (you can ask, as well as offer) but ended up buying secondhand because we really did need them. The vented tumbledrier when our previous washer dryer ended up being such a bust - the new style of reusable nappies that are much more user friendly for our current lifestyle - the stairgate - a couple of other bits and pieces here and there.
However, that is the nature of such activity. Giving stuff away doesn't buy you points to redeem against being given stuff - if the mystical karma of giving is accruing in my favour then you know, I'm kind of hoping for a car later in the year! but I'm not holding my breath.
What has giving stuff away gotten me, apart from the odd weird email? Not a lot in actual terms, not a penny in financial terms. One gentleman brought me a carnation when he collected an item. I got the warm feeling of a job well done when I took a delivery to a pregnant lady very close by so she didn't have to come out in the snow to collect it, and the suggestion of a cup of coffee with a neighbour. Seems odd that one has to subscribe to an internet mailing list to get to know the people who live around you, but then I guess it's as valid an approach as any other.
It has, however, gotten me a lot of space in my home. The 3 piece tan leather sofa sections that were third hand by the time they left our house and had a lot of wear, but were still sturdy enough to be used. Hell knows how we would have gotten rid of them. We currently have no vehicle in our household. Best situation: a council collection and off they go to the landfill. At least this way someone has had, for however short a time, something usable for nothing but the effort of collecting them.
And a lot of happy faces of people at my door. I guess that's kind of worth something.