A A

Yes, that’s right – Amazon A-fkn-nonymous. Save my soul.

My affair with Amazon began in 2000, I believe. And what an affair.

I have not purchased anything online for a month, two months maybe? It’s been a while. A long while. The old me: I would get paid and hurriedly type ‘A-M’ into the address bar of my browser and watch as it predicted those deliciously sexy six letters – Amazon. I’d check my cart for items I’d ‘saved for later’ and accept them to pay NOW. Now Now Now. (Kinda funny, because it would be at least a 6 week wait from that moment ‘til the gorgeous brown box would find itself hurled up onto my front porch). No mind, it’s not really about the instant high from the instant buy – it’s kind of like a denial of sorts. A fanciful trawl through the music and books of the world. I’ll take it! I’ll hold onto it and think about it! I’ll take it! I didn’t even know I wanted it, but I do! I’ll take it!

I like to say that I’ve decided to stop making these unnecessary purchases, but the truth is I hadn’t a choice. I simply do not have any money. Ha! So, there. It wasn’t because my skin was getting pocky and turning sallow, and I was hiding away in my hovel scuttling to the front door every three minutes in the hope that something had arrived. It wasn’t because I could no longer go to work and perform a solid-day’s work, and it wasn’t because my friends and family had gathered around me one Sunday afternoon for The Intervention. No, this wasn’t self-imposed – if it were up to me, I’d buybuybuybuybuy. There are not enough books in this world to satisfy. (Not that I read all that I purchase, but that’s another subject altogether).

No money
No buy

The only reason I’m adding this post is so that I can list my saved items, those items that are neatly tucked into my cyber-basket ready for that rainy day.

So, here’s my US $194.38 shopping trolley of goodies:

Books

Wislawa Szymborska
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Russell Brand
My Booky Wook

Wislawa Szymborska
Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

Wislawa Szymborska
Poems New and Collected

Elizabeth Berg
Durable Goods: A Novel (Ballantine Reader’s Circle)

Elizabeth Berg
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation

Augusten Burroughs
A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

George Gordon Byron
Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics)

Morton N Cohen
Lewis Carroll: A Biography

Stephen Fry
Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry
The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within

Music

Coldplay
Viva La Vida

Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco
Past Didn’t Go Anywhere

Fleetwood Mac
Rumors

Amen