Cottage at a click

This is how it goes for flibbertigibbet morons like me. I’m at the laptop processing words and it’s not going well. I’m beginning to bore myself. With so much to see and do within reach of the tip of my middle finger, I take a break and go shopping. A click on ‘save’, another on one of the icons on my ‘favourites’ tool bar, and the next moment I’m sauntering through a virtual global bazaar where I can buy virtually anything from a second-hand car to an Ivy Compton-Burnett first edition. I acquired this taste for shopping late in life. Already this taste is showing unmistakable signs of turning into a tawdry addiction like all the rest. A pleasant sort of madness comes over me, particularly when shopping on-line, and it’s as if I’m in Narnia.

On New Year’s Day I couldn’t see anything I wanted to buy, so I rented a house. I had arrived at a holiday homes website without consciously knowing why or how I got there, and the six photographs and the description of the first house I looked at completely sucked me in. With several clicks and a burst of typing I paid the deposit for eight weeks in the summer. When I came to my senses and stepped back out of the wardrobe, as it were, my impetuosity appalled me.

I should have wriggled out of it by getting in touch with the owners and saying, awfully sorry, big mistake, on drugs. Something like that. But I let the matter drift, as I normally do, and winter gave way to spring, and spring to early summer, and last week I received an email from the owner saying the balance was now due and would I like to come to have a look at the place on Friday between 12 and 2, as she would be there cleaning at that time.