Saturday 21 July 2012

When I die I hope I'm not wearing new shoes

I bought some new shoes last weekend.  Don't ask me why but I always like to get them worn in as soon as possible.  This is because I suffer from an irrational fear of dying without having got value for money out of a recent purchase.  If there's an official name for this phobia I don't know what it is.

I feel pretty much like this about everything I buy.  I don't imagine it would be my most pressing concern if I got hit by a bus, that I hadn't used my shoes much, but somehow I feel it matters.

The cousin of this feeling is the pride I feel in throwing things away that are completely worn out.  Last year I threw away one pair of cycling shorts and two pairs of cycling trousers and all three pair had completely worn through on the arse.  In fact, I had continued to wear them for a while with holes in the arses, but Ruth eventually told me I shouldn't go out like that anymore in case I got arrested.

I felt really good about having worn something all the way from brand new to completely destroyed and in general I really enjoy owning things that I use, and I don't like owning things I don't.

I like having pots and pans and plates and cups that are used over and over again, but I really don't like having that pair of trousers that I bought to work in a call centre but which I'm now too fat for, and I don't know why I'm keeping them because I doubt I'll ever be a 32 waist again, but I can't seem to give up hope.

Anyway, I wore the new shoes every day last week, and although they still look new, I know that if I get wiped out later this weekend, I'll at least have got a few pence worth of wear out of them, so my dying-without-having-worn-my-shoes-in phobia is affecting me less as the week goes on.

I'm also feeling a lot better now about my Green Eggs and Ham cycling jersey.  The first few times I wore it, it was buried under layers and layers of overcoats and woolly jumpers because of the terrible weather, so no-one had ever actually seen it, but the last few weeks I've actually used it as a top layer a few times, and so now the £45 price tag is weighing a lot less heavily on me.  By the way, the shoes only cost £30.

I wonder if this fear of dying without having worn stuff in will get worse as I get older.  I wonder if there's an age beyond which the buying of new things will be completely impossible, an age when even the purchasing of green bananas and tinned food with a good date on it will induce mild panic?

I guess there's only one way to find out.  I'm coming after you Future, and I've got my new shoes on!



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