After a decade of the modish however dementing kind of semi-detached co-habitation referred to as Living Apart Together (LAT), my accomplice and I just lately determined to maneuver underneath the identical roof.
In principle, LAT might channel the bohemian vibe of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In follow, it means your favorite cookbook/pair of footwear/omelette pan is invariably in the different home.
So, Ho! for the merging of our households, and a savage cull of stuff not needed on the voyage into our joint future. Our benchmark could be the earnest maxim of William Morris: there could be nothing in our new dwelling that was not helpful or lovely.
A month into the transfer, there are indicators that our definitions of magnificence and utility will not be in full settlement. Objects destined for the charity store or the tip appear unaccountably to have hitched a trip in the elimination van. Lurking in an obscure nook, I found the hideous electrical piano that we had undoubtedly agreed to get rid of.
My reproaches could be extra vociferous if I hadn’t a responsible secret of my very own: half-a-dozen empty scent bottles; L’Heure Bleue, Après L’Ondée, Bal à Versailles, Arpège. Of course they need to have gone out with the relaxation of the garbage. What form of particular person retains empty scent bottles? The kind of particular person, I might have stated till just lately, for whom the faint echo of a perfume fills an empty scent bottle with recollections.
But now I do know higher, for a Sunday newspaper reported a thriving web market in the empty packaging of high-end items: Chanel paper carrier bags (a assortment of 17 just lately bought for £265); containers from Louis Vuitton and Tiffany (common costs of £74 and £51 respectively) and – sure! – empty scent bottles: £47 apiece for perfume by Yves Saint Laurent.
The rationale behind such purchases is outwardly the longing of individuals with out celeb incomes to emulate social media posts, by celebs akin to the Kardashians, of themselves surrounded by luxurious buying bags.
In my salad days, each spare penny of my tiny wage was spent on superior frivolity, principally at end-of-season gross sales. Failing to anticipate its future worth as a social media prop, I threw out of a lot of the fancy packaging. But a surprising amount has resurfaced throughout our transfer.
Never thoughts nostalgia: it seems as if the reckless spending habits of my youth might fund the comforts of my center age.
Short shrift for grifters
A YouGov ballot reviews that the depraved actions of scammers are a rising menace, notably for the over-65s, 31 per cent of whom reported being contacted by fraudsters on a every day foundation.
Among them is one of my very own aged relations, a full of life 90-year-old who often solutions the telephone to well-spoken younger individuals who warn her that her on-line banking has been compromised, and urge her to switch her funds to a new account.
With her normal implacable good manners, my relation implores these individuals to not be troubled on her behalf: she has no on-line account. Her modest banking wants are performed by way of that critically endangered species: a actual, stay financial institution supervisor in a bricks-and-mortar excessive road financial institution.
It is a light, analogue resistance to merciless on-line shysters – and all the sweeter for that.
