Needs and Wants

My childhood was made up of amassing football cards and Panini stickers. Years were measured in collecting albums with my all-time favourite falling in 1977, the year of punk. Buck-toothed supposed athletes with bad perms and dodgy facial hair littered my waking moments. For the best part of Secondary school the only words I uttered in public were: “Got got got want got got got got want got got want want got got got…”

Cards and stickers were replaced by 2000AD and Marvel comics, there must have been a point I dabbled in the DC world but it never took root. There has to be something wrong with people who dreamt up Aquaman – a superhero who lived in an underwater fishing boat and who’s primary ability was the power to read the minds of fish? Come on. Being able to tell that Flipper is feeling a tad frisky is hardly the kind of stuff to enrapture a teenager in middle England.

Comics made way for graphic novels and books. It wasn’t enough to read 1984, I had to discover and own everything by Orwell; the same for HG Wells, Alan Moore, Iain Banks and the rest. Then came music and motorbikes – at one point there were eight in the garage and one parked up by the side of the house.

And this has progressed into vaping, much to the wife’s disappointment. I think she was hoping midlife would bring about a desire to collect DIY skills or see me developing a mutual appreciation for the works of celebrity TV chefs. But I’ve hit a snag.

Whereas it was easy to define what I would collect in my formative years I’m struggling with vape gear. To begin with it was Pinoy mechs and attys; I fully appreciate that some find their take on design, well, err, challenging. But there was one thing I knew for certain – I didn’t like the plain British design. That was like Aquaman as a metal tube.

And then I did, consequently it was mods from Europe that filled my rack. There was no way I was going for any of that regulated nonsense though until I had an epiphany. Tubes were suddenly outnumbered by boxes…before boxes became outnumbered by tubes. Rather than a bar chart graph of likes, my purchasing history resembles a three-dimensional sine wave after a child covered in jam and dried Weetabix has attacked it.

I’ve tried one in/one out strategies, one purchase a month techniques, just trading gear approaches and an outright ban on buying anything else – nothing seems to work because there’s always something interesting. No one needs fifteen mods and attys, a drawer full of batteries and boxes loaded with juice bottles but I just can’t stop; asking me not to collect things is like asking Katie Hopkins to stop writing guff.

Now, what I really need is a DNA40. I know this because I’ve said in the past that I don’t want one.