Hardware

Have you ever been to the Punt Verd?  To me, the most depressing - and frightening - bin is the one that’s full of computer monitors, printers, keyboards, mice etc, all just thrown in there, piled up…

And we're all responsible. Right now my home is utterly chaotic. We're living in a sea of machines, gadgets, cables, adaptors, chargers, digital cameras, plugs, wires and remotes. At present one son plus girlfriend is living here. And the other student son has just jetted home for the summer. Between us, we now have three laptops, two desktop PCs, two landline phones, four iPods plus cables and chargers, and six mobiles plus ditto. And now the boys have bought a cable to connect the iPod to the music system so we don't have to go through the exhausting process of riffling through the CD collection, picking one out, inserting it in the player... And we've discovered that this cable also connects the laptop to the system, so we can even listen to stuff we can't be bothered loading onto the pods. And it now transpires we can acquire yet another cable to connect the laptop to the big TV so we can watch the downloaded movies the DVD player refuses to play. There are four remotes lying around the living room, and the other day I thought the air-con had packed up until I realised I had been trying to turn it on with the cordless phone. I swear this is true. Oh, and the boys have also hauled out the Playstation. And then I was tidying out the wardrobe and I found a little nest of stuff: three mobile phone chargers, one with UK plug, a digital camera charger (also UK) and a USB cable. I realised all this had been left behind by our last paying guest, who'd had her bag stolen (with three phones in it?) in the pla?a Reial early in her stay. How the hell did we get to have all this stuff? Do we need it? With our families scattered across the world, our long-distance relationships, our international businesses, our comings and goings... how can we do without it? Valerie Collins is co-author, with Theresa O?Shea, of In The Garlic: Your Informative, Fun Guide to Spain.