I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but this isn’t actually the first time that I’ve attempted to go from New Year’s Day until my birthday without buying clothes. Whilst I was in my second year at Uni, my boyfriend at the time bet me £100 that I couldn’t go the 6 and a half months between those dates without purchasing any clothing whatsoever. Those of you that know me will be aware that I’m rather stubborn, so his telling me that I couldn’t do it just made me all the more determined. I did the whole ‘buying lots of new things before the cut off date’ thing, saving them up for best, so that although they’d been bought months in advance, it still felt like I was weating something new. Mainly because I was.
Soon enough, it was time to go back home for the Easter holidays. So, feeling very organised, I packed my laptop, TV/Video combi thing (yep, I was at Uni that long ago) my DVD player and 6 entire trees worth of revision notes into the boot of my car the night before I was due to leave. I then shoved 2 suitcases full of clothes onto one of the backseats, my dirty laundry on the front seat, ready for Lovely Mum to work her way through (she loved it. Honest.) and Timothy, hamster and friend, strapped in to the backseat not taken up with luggage, and drove over to The Ex’s (I didn’t call him that at the time. Maybe I should have done). Clambering out, Timothy under my arm, I looked up at his resigned face. (The Ex’s, not Timothy’s. Timothy never looked resigned – more inquisitive.)
‘Does the hamster have to come in?’
Yes, actually.
Then, in bed later on, half asleep, I drowsily muttered something about taking my suitcases out of my car. What I really meant was, would HE go and get my suitcases out of my car. He declined, on the basis that the car was parked right outside his house, and we were already in bed.
I’m fairly certain that you can guess where I’m going with this (and had probably worked it out by the second sentence of this entry). All of my clothes got stolen.
Now, let me make it clear – I’m not blaming The Ex for what happened (God knows, I blame him for enough stuff, it’s hardly fair to blame him for something that wasn’t actually his fault). The next morning, he went outside, whilst I busied myself watching daytime TV wrapped in a duvet, when there was a hammering at the front door. There stood The Ex, shouting about how ‘they’ had broken into my car, and taken my suitcases.
On a side note – in these situations, why do people always refer to criminals as ‘they’? I mean, do they actually know the people that have screwed them over? And if so, why the heck are they talking about ‘them’ instead of kicking them in the shins?
Not only had the little buggers stolen my suitcases, my coat lying on the floor of the car, and The Ex’s coat (with MP3 player thoughtfully left in the right hand pocket), but they’d smashed one of the back windows, and gone through all of my dirty laundry. Honestly, just writing about it now makes my skin crawl as much as it did when it first happened – thinking about people I don’t know, and will (hopefully) never meet, having seen more of my greying pants (it had been 4 months since I’d bought new ones at that point) than almost anyone I know is a pretty disturbing thought. Bleurgh.
The weird thing is that they hadn’t even bothered going into my boot. If they’re reading this;
1. I hope that you fell over and one of my suitcases landed on your face
2. I hope that you’re gutted that whilst YOU may have my favourite H&M jumper, and whilst YOU may have made me cry for 2 months on and off (as I remembered more things that were stolen), YOU also missed out on at least an extra £1oo worth of stuff. Yeah.
When I say that I cried on and off for 2 months, I’m not even exaggerating. I had a beautiful pink jumper from New Look that had been worn once, the red H&M jumper (that I was so upset about, Lovely Mum called H&M and begged them to find one, even though it was in stores 8 months before. They couldn’t), the Ipswich shirt with Cooper 11 on the back from where my Dad played a charity match at Ipswich and bought me a replica shirt – for months, whenever I walked around Canterbury, I looked for someone wearing it, making up what I’d say to them before I stole the shirt back, but I never found them. It’s probably for the best.
By the time I got home that day (with black bin bags artfully placed around the hole in my window and attached with masking tape), I was exhausted, and just wanted a hug from my Lovely Parents and Darling Sister, before going to bed. But I had to go shopping, as I really, literally just had the clothes I came home in (and, you know, the dirty washing). And I hated every second of it – I couldn’t find anything that I liked, and I remember Lovely Mum saying to Darling Sister,
‘No, she’s probably thinking about all the things that she’s lost instead of enjoying being able to shop again.’
Yes, yes I was.
And I didn’t get the £100, because technically I’d been shopping. But The Ex did give me a £20 New Look voucher. There’s a chance that he may have been feeling guilty.
I could lay the blame for my shopping addiction solely at the door of the horrible, mean people that stole all my clothes, on the basis that I never want to be in that situation again – I always want to have SOMETHING to wear. But I’m fairly sure that I’d be like this anyway. Also, I have it on good authority that The Boy would always get up to get my suitcases out of the car. He’s nice like that.
And that, my friends, is why you should always listen to the police/signs in car parks/your mother, when you’re told not to leave personal possessions on show. It really is worth the extra 39 seconds of your time to move the stuff. If nothing else, you’ll get more from your insurance company if the stuff’s in a locked boot.
4 days to go…
My name's Carrie-Ann, and I'm a Shopaholic. 