What's The Opposite Of Buyer's Remorse?

 

I kind-of collect plastic beads. I say kind-of because collecting would probably imply spending more than 50p-£1 a pop and making concerted effort to find them, that and it sounds a bit wanky. Anyway, I like the ones like the yellow and white you see here best - ovoid, fixed to their thread, and in strings about 19" long. It all started with the white ones which came from The Guildhall Market in Bath - there's an amazing jewellery stall there with all manner of sparkly wonders.

Sadly I didn't warn Alice that I was trying to make art. What you can see of my hand is in focus though.

It's the kind of place that paralyses me with lustful indecision - I'd like to own ALL of the pretty, but I'm blinded to the merits of individual brooches, necklaces and earrings. Too much! Too much! As moley said in The Wind In The Willows :)

The colours!

Anyway, in front of this stall on a little table is a box full of assorted plastic beads. They're mostly the long sort that you can knot - like twenties pearls - but there are various graduated round and oval ones. These are 50p each, and that's how I came to own the white ones.

I was far too pleased with myself for this photo

I loved my first string of white beads - they went with everything - and was quite unhappy when they broke. They'd got tangled in my hair and camera strap on a rather hasty walk along the Cornish coast path and the fixing came off the back. My Dad decided that araldite wouldn't work and bodged them back together with a safety pin and I carried on wearing them, but far less often than before as I was sad about the loss. Over the next few years I kept looking out for a replacement in charity shops, and took the opportunity to look whenever I was in Bath but to no avail. I amassed quite a collection of other colours - more than you see in the photo above - but never did I find the elusive white.

And then one day it occurred to me to see what eBay might have, and lo there was a seller with a whole stash of eighties deadstock plastic necklaces. I ordered one straight away and it's an exact replacement of my broken favourite. Hurrah!
In fact I may have just bought another, in grey, oops.

Oh! And the title of this, and what I meant to talk about: I saw a pale grey necklace in Shop on Saturday, didn't buy it, and spent my idle moments on Sunday regretting it. Boo for browser's remorse.
This probably isn't a terribly interesting post but hopefully you've enjoyed the pictures? Here's one last one of the original white necklace in action in Cornwall - look how happy I am!

Elephants! Perfectly innocent.