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A Nerd's Last Word - Two For One

By Michael Bosley

Homogeneity is ruining this country and it’s all my fault. I can’t beat a bargain.

It conflicts with the hushed, conscientious voice in my head that says “Do you know where these clothes are even made? Do you know what ingredients are in that £2 burger? How do you feel throwing your money into the cavernous, unquenchable gully of big business whilst small shops up and down the country are closing?”

“But it’s two for one!” I whine, like a spoilt child trying to convince their wearied mother that buying them one more Lego Star Wars set is an investment that can benefit the whole family.

Like a lot of people, I earn just enough money to see me through another month without having to perform unsavoury and unspeakable favours in exchange for a fistful of crumpled fivers and a departing pat on the arse. I’m grateful for each day when I’m able to wake from my bed and only have to fight over the bathroom and not over last night’s discarded kebabs, wondering if I made it through the night without being vomited on.

To ensure my cupboards remain stocked up with a salubrious helping of random tinned goods and brown sauce, I try to look after my money as much as I can.

This means very few trips to the local artisan markets for caviar-reared ham or visits to the trendy coffee shops for a half frozen, double knotted, semi-radicalised choca mocha grande latte, which as a white male millennial from rural Wiltshire is all I should be doing with my free time; well, that and Instagramming the shit out of my new undercut whilst vaping plumes of obnoxious, pungent hipster exhaust through my turn-of-the-century handlebar moustache – also known as the facially oriented, non-verbal cry for help.

My careful scrimping means that everything from clothes shopping to bulk buying a rainforest’s worth of toilet paper is catered for by grotesquely large organisations located in warehouses so gargantuan, they’re not even allowed within a square mile of the nearest town for fear that their shadow might bring permanent night to its residents.

These warehouses are located on estates that look like all the other trading estates located off every major A road in every corner of the country.

Metal, glass, tarmac and illuminated logos designed to be so ubiquitous and so ingrained in our psyche that you’d probably recognise the face of Colonel Sanders in a crowded street quicker than you would your own father’s.

These gleaming monoliths to capitalism suck in their custom from miles around, bleeding local towns dry. And I’m a disgusting, snivelling slave to them all, pawing at the cheap, mass produced bargains with a glint in my eye – like Sméagol with his eye on ‘the precious’.

I can’t help it.