You know how pious and dull I can be? Well one of my real “biggies” is that I can’t bear to buy something new when the thing we have still works really well…even if it’s inconveniently large for its type so, for example, we still have a CRT telly in the kitchen even though a modern flat screen would be neater and more convenient. You see, it works. It has no value so we can’t sell it and I won’t put it on the dump while it’s working therefore we’ll carry on using it until it expires then think about something else. Ditto mobile phone. Ditto…lots of the things in our house.

Occasionally we’ll realise that we own something of value to someone else so on those occasions we’ll sell it on the dreaded ebay. Last week, I nagged DM into submission and he put something that’d been hanging about in our garden for a couple of years on ebay. It sat around with no bids for most of the week, then a bid at the lowest value came in. Someone contacted us and asked if we’d drop the “buy it now” price by 25%. Me and ‘im fell out. I said “yes, snatch their hand off”. DM said “no way, I’ll drop it by 10% and see if we can get them to go for that". The buyer dropped out and I was furious. Anyway, the final day came and the minutes were counting down. The bid remained at the low starting bid (about ¼ what we wanted for it) and DM was squirming. I was saying “why didn’t you grab the money” and getting really narky. Then there was a flurry of activity and we ended up getting more than the original “buy it now” price. The egg on DMs face suddenly miraculously disappeared only to be replaced by a smug grin.Oh and just to make his victory over me even more sweet, the person who asked us to reduce the price then decided he didn't want it at 10% lower carried on bidding and lost it by a fiver to the eventual winner. Talk about coming up smelling of roses - that's my man!

The buyer came and took away the item today so he got his few dollars more. Now all he has to do is spend the money on the timber to build some book cases, build them, install them and wax them and I’ll be properly pleased with my few dollars more!