I'm no Scrooge but...

The world is divided into two types of person: hoarders and non-hoarders. In general I see the former as male and the second as primarily feline, though my wife disagrees. According to the pre-nup I get custody of the garden tools.
I have a friend who has complained for 26 years that his wife threw out his thesis. Did he want to read it? Well, no, but…
All this is brought on by the arrival of the new baby. I firmly resolved that, instead of keeping old vinyls safe and warm in the garage while the four-wheeled metallised liquid silver goddess sits outside exposed to wintry rain and a bunch of the least continent, steel-piercing crows you ever dodged, things have to change.
My brother was a hoarder, his wife a chucker-out, and he was barely in his grave before his old jazz vinyls started to arrive – boxes and boxes of them – to join my own collection, much of which it duplicates. How could I throw them out or E-bay them to heaven knows what sort of indignity?
The all-breathing, condensation-proof car cover arrives tomorrow.

Christmas looms. It seems to loom more heavily every year. And the more affluent people become, the more presents other people buy them. Surely if people can afford to buy more things, the other people should be buying them fewer presents? Festivities and family reunions, yes – excessive eating and drinking definitely - but presents? They have to be wrapped, ribboned, labelled and delivered - trees felled, fossil fuels burned, ozone layers depleted… Dickens must be turning in his grave – I don’t think this is what he meant at all. I should declare an interest here: I don’t like shopping.
But if you really must buy me something, my list is at Harrod’s.