Huh, honestly!

Last week Kelly got a summer straw bag from e-bay for £4.50 (postage included). It's a lovely bag and came complete with a little purse, which came complete with sixty quid stuffed in it. She tried lots of ways of thinking about it which would mean it was actually now ours, but we decided anything we did with it that wasn't send it back would be an endeavour to keep it. Send it back we did.

Then, on Thursday, some *expletive, deleted* *expletive, deleted* *expletive, deleted* drove into my car while it was parked outside the house, and then drove off again leaving nothing more than the wreckage and skid marks. Oh, and me in ball of fury, out of pocket £150 excess, almost four years no claims wiped out and a beefed up premium.

I figured, since honesty obviously doesn't pay, I'd attempt a half truth myself. This month i've received two copies of 'Hot Fuzz', one from a certain record store in Wakefield and the second from a certain on-line distribution site. I thought it would be most convenient for me to return the one from the web-site to the record store, since it was still properly packaged and unwatched. I was turned away from the record store who said that since there was no proof of purchase they wouldn't take it. This means i now have to go through the rigmarole of confessing to those who got me the second copy that i already have it and, via a lengthy postal process, go about arranging some sort of exchange. I'm not wicked, where's my rest?

I think there's a great deal to be thought and said about how exchanges are made with others of things we own, will own, have owned, the value placed on these things, why we find counting our blessings so uninstinctive and the great truth that, if there is such a concept as grace, none of us get what we deserve.