Yuuuup!

Sometimes, very rarely, we get to enact our fantasies.  It's OK, I'm not going to go into a graphic description of some horrendous bit of cosplay or anything like that.  No, but over the weekend I got to behave like Dave Hester from Storage Wars, by bidding someone up on eBay.  It really was quite exhilarating.  Even if I didn't shout 'Yuuup!' every time I put a new bid in.  Now, to be clear, I wasn't bidding to be a complete bastard - I did have a genuine interest in the item on sale, but it was being seriously undervalued when I joined the bidding but, as it turned out, the top bidder had clearly bid a huge amount of money on it.  I just pushed a few times until we got up to the maximum I was willing to pay, which was clearly still some way short of the other guy's top limit.  But hey, at least I forced him to pay something closer to the item's true value.  Truth was, I was pissed because I thought that I was the only one who had spotted the item and had been stalking it for over a week, only to find this other guy muscling in at the last minute.  But, as I said, it did feel exhilarating, especially as I've been on the receiving end of such bidding so many times in the past.  (The more I think about it, the more I think that perhaps I should have turned it into some kind of cosplay, by donning shorts and baseball cap to impersonate Dave Hester as I bid).

I had better luck bidding on a couple of other items, though, where I really was the only person interested.  I was actually forced to bid on these as replacements for another item I won a couple of weeks ago which has failed to materialise. The problem being that the seller has used a courier, namely Hermes, to send them.  Basically, they have made no attempt to deliver them and, according to their tracking, the package is now being returned to the sender.  Now, their tracking also claims that they made three calls at my house in delivery attempts, except that they left no cards, so I unaware they were even trying to deliver them (when they knew I would be at work).  Moreover, I was in on one of the alleged attempts, but never actually saw or heard anyone knocking on my door.  Very mysterious.  If (and that's a big if - let's not forget tat Hermes was not only the Ancient Greek god of commerce and communications, but also of thieves) the seller ever gets the items back, I'm prepared to give them the option of resending them via Royal Mail (I'm prepared to pay the difference in postage).  Otherwise, I'll just recover my money via PayPal and be satisfied with the replacements I've obtained (all of which are being sent by Royal Mail).

But, all-in-all, it wasn't a bad weekend, despite having to deal with Hermes (or not, as they haven't actually had the courtesy to respond to my e-mails).  Not only did I obtain the replacement items and play at being Dave Hester, (I have to admit, being Dave from Storage Wars has never been a top fantasy - I'd much rather be Barry Weiss, the 'Silver Fox'/'Dirty Old Man' of the series, but he doesn't bid people up all the time), but I also caught up with a couple of old films I've been wanting to watch for a while: the Marty Feldman comedy Every Home Should Have One and Kid Stuff, the English-language version of one of those films where Antonio Cantafora and Paul L Smith pretend to be Terrance Hill and Bud Spencer.  On top of all that, I've also sorted out my great nieces' Christmas presents via US Amazon.  The orders have been placed, and the delivery is now in the hands of Amazon and the US Mail.  I can do no more.  It's a huge relief.  It means that I can start turning my attention to buying stuff for my Christmas.  A Christmas which will have to be less sugary than in the past and less alcoholic, for the sake of my health.  I'll also have to decide what wonderful present I'm going to buy myself - last year it was my Tassimo coffee machine.  Nothing has really sprung to mind so far this year.  To be honest, the thing I'm most looking forward to this Christmas is being able to spend some quality time with my model railway, progress on which has stalled since the summer.