3 for 2 does not equal 1 for 2/3

Am I the only person to find the “3 for 2”, “2 for 1”, “buy one get one free” offers pointless because all I want is 1?

I  read an article yesterday which states that 50% of US households are single, so I think I can’t be the only one out there who wonders about the markets continual preoccupation with multi-buy offers.

I remember, in the days before the internet, needing to buy a single rail ticket between Sheffield and London and ending up being told by the booking clerk that what I needed was a return. No I politely said what I had asked for was a single. He quietly explained I should buy a return because it was cheaper. More recently, a friend also told me of cases where buying 2 return air tickets, and only using one half of each, has worked out cheaper than buying one return. Result = empty seats.

Then there are those supermarkets offers of the buy one mango get one free type. But if you are not going to eat the second mango then why buy it, even for zero cost? Result = gluttony or waste. Instead, why not have singles supermarkets, where buying one pork chop instead of a pack of 3 is possible? Or why can’t supermarkets let you sign over your second mango to someone else in return for their second pack of oranges say? Or credit your card with a free mango on your next visit? Or let 2 people share a “2 for 1” offer between them? Or where the zero cost mango could be given to a food charity as your donation?

Next there are the Vouchers for Schools Schemes. Not knocking it, its a great idea. A tiny amount for each transaction translates into real Computers for Schools across the huge volume turnover at supermarkets. But here too there is a singleton factor to the equation. When supermarkets first started giving vouchers for schools, I asked my till server if she wanted them for her kids school. No she replied she was not allowed to take them. OK fair enough, but as a consequence I’m always on the hunt for someone with kids of school age or someone who looks like a grandparent to hand my vouchers off to. I remember once, having done a huge shop one day and then buying a whole load of wine, I had this enormous pile of vouchers, and would you believe it a supermarket devoid of obvious parents! After several attempts to find a person with kids I’m on my way out of the shop when I spot a women at the other end of the car park. It turns out she was a teacher who happily took my very large pile. Why can’t supermarkets have a drop box for each local school?

Then there are 2 for 1 meal offers – what good are these when you are eating on your own? They are in effect a surcharge of being a singleton. No different than single supplement room charges.

Today another of these silly offers. I needed to get my eyes tested and the Optician has a “buy one get one free” offer. But I have perfectly good frames for my glasses, I just need new lenses. On the other hand I only have one pair of prescription sunglasses at the moment and that is never enough, especially when living in sunny tropical climes, and so really needed to buy a second pair.

First the optician costed out my lenses. When I sad I wanted my sun glasses changed as well out came the buy one get one free offer. So here’s how it works out

Glasses : Lens £102.50 x 2 + Frame £144.50 = £349.00

Sunglasses :  Lenses £66.00 x 2 + Frame £29.00 = £161.00

Eye test - £20.00

Total £530.00 (Extortionate!)

Discount £161.00

Paid £369.00 (Still expensive! With a need to change my lenses every 18 months to 2 years that is £15.00 - £20.00 per month cost)

I am buying exactly the same frames as I have already for my ordinary glasses. This means I now have 3 frames the same!

Can someone please tell me why I should be buying an unwanted frame, that someone has spent time making, that materials have been used to make, that energy has been used to make and which in effect is surplus, it is waste?  result – unrequired production, waste.

Why not say that instead I could have £144.50 off my sunglasses? With this, I might have even spent more money and chosen a more expensive frame as the choice for sunglasses within this offer is somewhat limited. As it was, I’d spent time looking at their range of frames and was well and truly non plused by the pitiful choice. Lots of all too similar frames, almost all rectangular in shape, black, blue, pink, violet in colour but little in the way of my rich autumnal browns, greens, and reds to choose from. This wasn’t a cultural acclimatisation moment of too much choice, they were just a boring selection. So I ended up with quite ordinary stayed chocolate brown frame. I want to be more adventurous in my sunglasses, but nothing individual, nothing distinctive, nothing very colourful. However, for what amounts to £161.00-144.50 = £16.50 for my sunglasses I am not complaining money wise, it just seems warped logic and wasteful over production to me. 

I just hate these offers! Rant over!

I guarantee you will never look at pink shoes the same again!

The Consequences of Love

by

Sulaiman Addonia

 

A beautifully told story, touchingly read by Christopher Simpson.

After his reading of Q&A/ Slumdog Millionaire I wondered if Christopher Simpson could become one of my favourite narrators. With listening to this reading the answer is undoubtedly Yes.

The book is also a little marvel. It vastly surpasses the chic lit Girls Of Riyadh which lies in the same space – that of sexual repression under the strict Saudi regime. Here we follow the fortunes of Eritrean refugee Nasar, now living in Jeddah.

Nasar’s life could not be more different to that of the gossiping Girls of the upper echelons of Saudi society found in Rajaa Alsanea’s book. His world is full of folks doing menial work, scraping a living, sniffing glue; amidst sexual abuse and  male prostitution, surrounded by opulence on the one hand and state sanctioned barbarism on the other. In a society full of extortion, corruption and  double standards a lone, young and attractive, foreign boy like Naser is at the bottom of the pecking order.

Remembering his mother’s sacrifice to get him and his younger brother out of the war zone their country had become, he spends his time dreaming of women in a world of men. The Jeddah he sees is black and white – the black abayas of the women and the white robes of the men. He never sees a woman, only their black. They are  hidden and separate. They, and the love he seeks, are inaccessible, unavailable until, in streets patrolled by the religious police, a love letter drops at his feet and brings pink shoed Fiore into his life. We are swept along by their courtship, deepening love into the Consequences of their illicit love.

The harsh realities of life hit home and test the young lovers resolve and commitment. Without giving anyway the ending of this book it is hard to make further comment, except to say this was a politically and emotionally charged, memorable read. As a first book I thought it tremendous achievement.

ashramblings verdict 5* if you read any of Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh, Yasmina Khadra’s Swallows of Kabul and / or Khaled Hossein’s A Thousand Splendid Suns  then you must read this. Highly recommended.

Roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair….

…of all the things to have missed! I took a walk into Cambridge today to get my hair cut. Over 12 inches chopped off and it  is still below my shoulders. Walking back, on a late autumnal day, with a slight chill in the air, the wind picks up and whoosh, hair flies! A great “cultural reacclimatisation” moment as Springsteen rings through my  head and after almost 2 years of wearing my hair tied up and back it is free to move and my scalp feels cool. Priceless :)