Pricey Passion

I’m not the kind of person who rushes out to replace a gadget as soon as it breaks. Take the other day, for example, whereby my MP3 player stopped working and, rather than replace it, I decided to take my Sony Discman (that’s Discman kids, look it up on Wikipedia) to the gym, at which point I discovered what embarrassment really was. The looks I received were quite astounding, each one more perplexed than the last. I felt wholly shamed by the unspoken mockery laid upon me and I’m sure some of the younger, less experienced gym-goers half expected some kind of alien life-form to emerge from within it.

It would be fair to say that I find myself in these kinds of embarrassing situations more than most people usually do (that is to say, most of the time). I guess financial circumstances dictate I reserve cash where I can. You can imagine the wave of panic that washed over me, then, as I witnessed my beloved PlayStation 3 – the console I practically had to sell my mother to purchase and the one I use for playing most of my games and watching all of my blu-ray movies – die in front of my very eyes.

I have long anticipated and indeed prepared myself emotionally for the demise of my Xbox 360. At no point would I have been in the least bit surprised if it were to have some kind of prepubescent tantrum and refuse to work entirely. After all, 360s belonging to those around me have always fallen like flies feasting on a heroin addict’s lavatory contents. But I hadn’t braced myself for losing the usually so reliable PlayStation 3. Nonetheless, there I found myself, staring at a blank screen and not listening to the beautifully familiar hum of my Sony console.

Rather than become despondent, I probed deep and hard, and I can happily report that my console has now returned from the dead. But the whole experience has, quite frankly, left me a little shaken. My warranty was out, after all. I don’t usually like to pay for insurance or extended cover, but had my PlayStation 3 totally called it a day, I may have been forced to do something crazy like purchase a Wii. Nintendo’s console is relatively cheap after all, and despite the fact it is unable to boast the standard seventh-generation specs, at least it actually works long enough for you to purchase a second game for it!

But I guess that’s the thing with stuff; the more of it you accumulate, the more dependent on it you become. I might even give the consoles, TV, PC and various other electrical appliances cluttering up my bedroom a rest for a while and engage in some activity that doesn’t start by me switching on a plug socket (I didn’t think such activities existed either, but I’ve been assured that they do). I wouldn’t hold out too much hope, however, because the calluses on both of my thumbs tell me I won’t last five minutes with such joypad deprivation.