mostly david ephgrave

I spent £79 on a replacement charger for my MacBook today; expensive, much? It’s not every day you send nearly eighty quid on a lead with a plug on the end of it…and it’s never a good day when you do; there are so many things I would have rather used the money on. It’s like when someone buys you a functional, yet dull household appliance as a Christmas or birthday gift; you know it’s useful, but you’d rather they’d given you anything but. Not so long ago, my dad treated me to a dehumidifier, and while I was grateful for a marginally less steamy bathroom, it was hard to work up much excitement about it; it would have been cheaper just to push the window open a bit. Unfortunately, the new charger was a necessary evil, as one of the two I own decided to fray to the point of no longer being usable a few weeks back, and I’m sick of having to carry the other with me each time I walk to my office, instead of keeping one of them there. I also need to have ...

One thing I've learnt from collating my 2015/16 Tax Return is that receiving a chiropractic treatment costs the same as a train to Kettering. Both services come in at £37.00, which isn't cheap, particularly when one leaves you in incredible physical discomfort and anguish and the other is a chiropractor appointment. But which was the most indispensable? I definitely gained more from having my bad back looked at, as the trip to Kettering was for a gig that, while in a lovely building (a converted bookshop that doubled as a music venue, with guitars, mandolins and ukuleles on the walls), the show itself was very disorganised. It was run by a couple of secondary school students with their parents, for which I didn't get my expenses recouped and came out the other side feeling like the elephant in the room, because I wasn’t a teenager; I tend to walk into these things (when I don't catch the train).  It could have been worse. That £37 t...

Spending £90 on two shirts has put me in a full-scale panic. I went out with the intention of buying something new to wear onstage. I haven’t bought clothes in an aeon and it’s starting to show. I have two shirts I would describe as my best which are in constant rotation. There’s only so many times you can wash and flash-dry the same outfit before it starts to degrade. The contents of my wardrobe could double as an illustration of coastal erosion. I was all set to go somewhere closer to my budget (rhymes with 'text'), when I noticed my favourite - and pricier – clothes shop had a 50% sale. You can’t argue with that. Whether the discount would equal the sale price of an item from my intended destination is up for debate (answer: “no’), but it was worth a look. This is how they lure you in. There were a number of shirts on the rail outside suiting my remit (i.e. “slight hint of wallpaper”). All were at a marked down price. There was n...