Thank you for your nine different nominations in the category "something for the weekend". For once I found it quite easy to cross almost all of your suggestions off the list. So here's why I'm not spending £40 on eight of them.
Problem 1: I just don't do that sort of thing (for example, driving a JCB at Diggerland)
It's not the JCB I have the problem with, nor the fact I'd have to go to Kent to drive one. No, I have a problem with the driving. I sold my car back in 2001 after a unimpressive 2½ years behind the wheel, and I've never looked back. I'm transport passive (remember?), so I'd not want to spend even one more weekend pretending I have driving ambition. Sorry. (See also: hiring prostitutes, magic mushrooms, eating Chinese food, a massage, a facial)
Problem 2: It wouldn't be good for me (for example, sledging after the thaw)
Remember this time last week when snow was a meteorological rarity that you only saw in the sky about once every couple of years? Remember how excited you were when you looked out of the window and saw those first magical snowflakes falling from the clouds, dancing in the wind like a distant childhood memory? Remember how the second snow shower a few hours later was more of a repeat performance and not quite so evocative? Remember how, by the fifth snow shower, you'd become completely blasé about those falling flakes as if they were the most normal thing in the world? And remember how, by the twentieth shower, you'd gone off the whole snowfall thing because of the associated Arctic chill and increased central heating costs? In fact I bet that, now the thaw's arrived and all chance of sledging has melted away, you're really rather pleased to see the back of the white stuff. Until winter 2007, when no doubt those first flakes will be just as magical as before. (See also: eating four thousand penny sweets, watching three consecutive IMAX films)
So just one thing remains on your list of submissions - a a vintage (1965) bottle of wine. So that's what I'll be buying, thank you (and thank you ew). I plan to store my birthday vintage in the kitchen next to my three unopened bottles of champagne. Then all I'll need will be therapy to encourage me to finally open one of them and enjoy the contents.
Retail therapy (results 4)
