It’s never-ending. All the Things that have ever died from start to finish. And still they keep on coming…
Ah, the fridge – cooler of beer and sundry other items. I feel compelled to make a confession here, just in case you ever find me standing in your kitchen, invited or otherwise: I am a habitual fridge browser. It’s not so much what exists inside that interests me, unless it involves beer of some […]
If ever we require further evidence as to the deleterious effects of taking too many stimulants, we need look no further than the vacuum cleaner. Just what the hell is going on? Once upon a time, vacuum cleaners looked like this: They were stiff, upright fellows, made out of good solid steel and usually came […]
Dead desktop printers sit like environmental landmines, innocuous-looking booby-traps packed with plastics and metals and wasteful inks. They are the embodiment of ‘built-in obsolescence’, not simply through the use of cheaply-made parts with all the life expectancy of a soap bubble but also by being deliberately programmed to stop working after a certain number of […]
To mark the occasion of having notched up 50 dead televisions, it seems appropriate to include this much rarer item found on the street – a dead flat screen. To date, all of the dead televisions unearthed have been of the boxy CRT variety, tubby tellies turfed out to fend for themselves as part of […]
So here’s the challenge: make ironing seem sexy. It is remarkable the number of household chores – decorating, gardening, sewing, cooking – that have been transformed into lifestyle hobbies, tasks that people willingly take on for their own amusement, and yet there are still some activities that resist renovation, that refuse to be incorporated under […]
Brian stared glumly out across the field of stalls and table tops. Rows of white vans were lined up behind trestle tables as far as the eye could see, their rear doors flung open as more and more objects were being disgorged from inside. A throng of anoraks and beanies shuffled between the tables, moving […]
There was a moment, no more than a nano-second, after I came across this dead tie when I imagined it might be moving. Something about the pattern and the way in which it has been coiled immediately suggested to me that it was a snake, lying in there in wait, silent and all snake-like. There […]
I came across these two items on the same day, not far from each other, and was struck by the disparity of their circumstances. One of them sits there all clean and neat, its plug laid carefully on top. There’s even a lime lying in the gutter next to it, as if Nature itself has […]
Is it safe to say that this item has finally ground to a halt? Safe but, perhaps, not wise. The thing that strikes me about this death, and which, in its own way, is a small triumph, is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. I cannot recall ever having previously seen a […]
I can’t help wondering if these crutches are here because someone threw them away. No, I realise they have been discarded, left behind, abandoned. What I mean is that somebody was hobbling along, slowly making their way up the hill on their crutches when, suddenly, they heard the call to “Throw away your crutches” and […]