TheBanyanTree: A beggarly account

[John Bailey]

Wednesday August 20, 2003

A BEGGARLY ACCOUNT


With an impressive show of light and sound that would not have been out of 
place in a mad scientist's laboratory, our microwave exploded this morning. 
Or imploded. Or whatever it is that microwaves do when they fail, suddenly 
and spectacularly.

"$$&*," cried Graham as he leapt to snap off the house supply at the 
contact breaker box.

The microwave went silent and sat there, sulking, and smoking slightly.

"That is an ex-microwave," I said, with superb phrase choice but little 
originality.

So I resorted to softening the butter for my breakfast toast the old way, 
with hot water. Later in the morning we tossed the defunct device into the 
recycle bin at the town dump and took ourselves off for the usual retail 
conflict encounter in one of the big tin sheds housing a white goods 
business, close by the supermarket.

"Can I interest you in our extended warranty?"

"No, thank you."

"I can offer you a very good deal."

"No, thank you."

"I can guarantee you won't find insurance cheaper anywhere else."

"No, thank you. Is this going to go on much longer? I have several other 
things to do"

And, with that, the assistotron sank into a silence almost as sullen as our 
defunct microwave and settled to the business of checking our new microwave 
through the till.

Why they have to turn a routine retail deal into a conflict I just don't 
understand. I don't just fail to understand it, I jolly well resent it. 
What with the big burly security guard who glares at you as you enter the 
shop, the security cameras that follow you all the way round, and the 
assistotron who treats you as an uncooperative moron because you don't want 
to spend fifty quid to insure a ninety quid appliance against failure after 
the first year, shopping for white goods has become a fraught, discouraging 
experience instead of the quiet, pleasant exchange it used to be.

Ah well. It's a battle I can't win in a war with no hope of victory. All I 
can get out of it is a Tufty badge for staying reasonably well-mannered in 
the face of adversity.

The new microwave is a great improvement over the old one. It has the same 
capacity but occupies a noticeably smaller counter footprint, and it was 
about half the price. It's also stuffed with impressive new features like 
automatic this and intelligent that, and with Chaos(tm) defrosting. I shall 
not use any of them, of course, but will go on selecting the power I need 
for the time I think appropriate.  It's nice to know the extra gizmos are 
there, though.  You never know, I may one day have an hour or two to spare 
to work them out and shall discover they are the best thing since the 
rediscovery of unsliced bread. My only regret is that it's a Japanese 
device, manufactured in China, instead of a European one. The European 
microwaves were, by comparison, flimsy, inferior things, and way over-priced.

So, another microwave bites the dust. I can't find a moral in the story, or 
a worth-while lesson to be learned of it. It's just a replacement for one 
of the chattels we choose to cart around with us, nothing special, not even 
something essential. Just a convenience, bought and paid for. Quite 
shameful, really, unless you can be philosophical about it:

         "What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see
         his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed
         to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account
         of empty boxes?"

                                                 --Thoreau


--
John Bailey   Carmarthenshire, Wales
journal of a writing man
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>