Purchasing power

Despite my unemployment, or perhaps because of it, I have only been buying essentials lately, but I've still managed to get some nice new stuff...

Vacuum Cleaner
It was a bargain at £29.99. I'd been thinking for a while of replacing my Dyson cylinder cleaner (never loses suction, my foot!), but it was just an expense I couldn't justify. However, whilst browsing the Brita jugs with PT's LYW, I noticed a VAX upright cleaner for a penny short of 30 quid. I looked at it a lot to make sure I hadn't been mistaken, then I took the plunge and bought it. I'm telling you - best thing I ever bought ever. It actually cleaned the carpet in my bedroom. Like it's supposed to. Not like my rubbishy Dyson. Hurrah!

Cable
A couple of weeks ago I had my first Sky+ failure. The series finale of Chuck (on Virgin One) was actually something called Amsterdam Nights (you can guess the content). We'd enjoyed the whole series, and missing the final episode was crushing! Every other programme seems to be on at least 5 times a week, but not this one episode... So, thanks to iTunes I downloaded it onto my PC. Now all I had to do was figure out how to watch it on the TV. So I popped into the Sony Centre in Staines to ask for their advice. Much patronising later (grrr...) I was the proud owner of an HDMI cable. Simple! Plug it in and watch the PC on the TV, right? Well, sort of. Just an hour's tweaking to get the screen resolution, colour and sound right... But it's done now and so I can download to my heart's content. BBC iPlayer, Sky Player, iTunes - the digital world is my virtual oyster.

Books
I really should join the library. But I bought the next in the Agatha Raisin series (now I've read them all), A Thousand Splendid Suns (the follow-up to The Kite Runner), and something called One Red Paperclip: The Story of How One Man Changed His Life One Swap at a Time. The latter is the true story of a chap who decided to make a series of swaps, getting bigger and better each time, in the hope of swapping the original red paper clip for a house (obviously not in one swap, but a series of bigger and better trades). I like the book (just as I like all those 'mini adventures' like Round Ireland With a Fridge, Join Me, I Am Dave Gorman, etc.) but it was slightly spoilt for me by the self development/management handbook type paragraphs at the end of each chapter. Things like "Today is tomorrow's yesterday". That kind of thing. I just stopped reading them...

Tomato plants
I'm a bit late, but I had a pot to fill, so I thought I'd see if I could get any tomatoes. I've been feeding them and everything, and now they've got 3 flowers, so I should be in for at least 3 tomatoes. Hurrah!

That's the extent of my shopping over the last month or so (apart from household essentials like food, of course). Quite self controlled for me, I thought...