Like they're going out of fashion

Ludicrous as it sounds, there seems to be a national shortage of wellies; well, in Newcastle at least. I must have spent 3 hours skating the streets of town to find a pair of the ugly, plasticy boots. And I came home with nothing more than frost bite in my feet.

An ice river running through the town centre and a rabble of foreign market tents trapped people at either side of the road while those who had bought wellies 15 years ago, when they were available, kicked around in the slush puppy in the divide.

Ok, that’s an exaggeration - 15 years ago. I did learn another thing, there aren’t many size 8 people in Newcastle. So now we have a shortage of wellies and a shortage of size 8 feet. One we can control, to an extent, and the other we can’t really do much about! I had four choices – size 8, size 2, the odd pair of Hunter wellies at £65 in Schuh or find myself a makeshift alternative. 

So after all that, I’ve resorted to wrapping my feet in Morrisons carrier bags before putting my shoes on.

Does it mean anything?

I can’t help but notice the loose usage of the word love. Where have the times gone when ‘I love you’ was a turning point. Or, more to the point when it actually had meaning and depth.

Scrolling down the ‘Facebook wall’ I’m bombarded by children not even old enough to be members, publishing statuses along the lines of ‘I love you so much Ben <3‘. The likes of 13-year-olds expressing feelings they can’t even think to imagine how they might feel.  And then there’s the odd soppy one my age who can’t control their emotions and feel the need to over-express. Like we give a shit.

However, when being so cynical, it’s hard to find the time when it’s acceptable to tell someone you love them. We’re always telling our friends and family how much we love them but surely this is different? One’s ever-lasting and unconditional, and the other can be broken with a slip of the tongue. After all, 2010 is the year of the love rat. If it can happen with celebs, what’s to stop it happening to any one of us, anytime?

Will something move in place of the ‘I love you’? If so, I can’t even imagine to think what. Thinking about it like this, surely it wouldn’t be too wrong to say a relationship is no longer as official. But no two people are the same. It wouldn’t be right to tell somebody they aren’t in love, accusing them of expressing a feeling which we think is an impossibility. Because after all, how do we know? We can’t take every besotted 14-year-old on to Jeremy Kyle to take the lie-detector test every time we get pissed off at the sight of what we sarcastically call ‘young love’. So we just keep on ‘LOVING’.       

We're all wishing we'd taken the street to our right

You’d think something as simple as walking through a town centre would be stress free, care free and more to the point, FREE. But in today’s climate there’s always somebody collaring us for money, or to sign our details up to some chain email which will no doubt result in some sole destroying, computer hard-drive destroying virus.

We’ve all had someone thrust a bucket in our face, or guilt trip us in to buying something only suitable for entering the next bin we see. It was only the other day when walking through Newcastle and ahead of me I could see swarms of bodies in blue jackets, but too naïve to notice the fact they were herding up members of the public like sheep. It was minutes later when I claimed I was 15 to get out of the ‘well let me tell you what it’s about, you have to do nothing‘, knowing the ‘it’ll only take a few minutes’ cliché all too well.

Yearly events similar to the likes of ‘Children in Need’ and ‘Comic Relief’ are the perfect opportunity to donate money, or at the very least raise our awareness’. But at what point do we say enough is enough? Or don’t we? Do we go on through life giving our time and money to others in the hope that we would be reimbursed if we found ourselves in a similar unfortunate situation to those who we’re giving our money?

Or, is that exactly what we should be looking at? The reason in which WHY we give our money away with the drop of a hat, or in this case, the shake of a bucket. When will we stop buying in to the over-written and over-rehearsed clichés from the people who are nothing more than aliens to us? We’ve never seen these people, and will never again see these people, and without the perfectly crafted smile, puppy-dog eyes and bullshit slogan, we’d not even dare to entertain the idea of opening up our purse to a stranger.

I’ll listen and I’ll give but eventually, we’re all going to reach the point of no return; the point in which if we give away any more, we’ll be on the other side of the fence begging money from the likes of our current selves. And that’s another story.