Toys R Us

Toys R Us, I’ve decided, is an odious place. You go in there with a list and rational intentions but once inside get sucked into a panic that your child needs one of everything in the shop for a fulfilled life. I think it’s the noise that disturbs your mind. In every aisle a different jingle is playing. It’s hard to make a sensible decision about playmobil when “Baby Born Baby Born” is ringing in one ear and Dora the Explorer chatting in the other.

My husband says I’m miserable and it’s fun but no-one else there looked like they were having fun. They all had gloomy faces, wandering aimlessly round and round the shop looking for what they really came for while wondering how they were going to afford the huge boxes which seemed to have found the way into their trolleys.

I finally lost all hope when trying to chose a puzzle and went instead to some alternative toy outlets – charity shops. There I bought four puzzles for the cost of about three pieces of a puzzle in Toys R Us. Charity shops and nearly new sales are wonderful places for children’s toys. Why pay a premium for something new when your little dears will break or bend or scratch or lose bits of the toy within minutes. Second hand toys are economic and the ultimate in recycling. Sorry Toys R Us, I’m doing my Christmas shopping with The Heart Foundation.

Fat cats and fat people

Our media is swamped with doomsday reports of how we are plunging into a world of tightening our belts. I was at the supermarket this morning and decided this might not be a bad thing. You only have to look around and see how fat we are as a nation to realise we have had too much excess. We know nothing of self-restraint, only Buy One Get One Free so we can eat twice as much.

Also at the supermarket was a stooped old man with war medals on his navy blazer. Seeing him made me realise that his generation have known true hardship. We don't really know what it means to go without. We think life is tough when the satellite television signal is interrupted or we can't immediately have this week's latest model of mobile phone. How about having nothing to eat but what we've been able to grow? I think it might do some people a lot of good.

I appreciate that the state of the global economy is serious and for some people this will cause real problems but I do wish that the media would pause in its self-perpetuating talk of doom and look at potentially positive aspects of a negative situation. If we could all learn to mend something when it breaks and waste less food, we might come out of this crisis in a better state than we went into it.