Something frivolous for a change (or perhaps not so frivolous)

As light relief from the horrors of this utterly unnecessary election and Brexit, plus the disasters of Trump, I am allowing myself to laugh at myself in this brief blog.

I am of the generation brought up in the real austerity days after the 2^nd world war, when there was nothing available in the shops to buy, and in any case you viewed buying anything which was not absolutely essential as frivolous, and made sure that you saved everything you could.  “Waste not, want not” was the slogan then.  These words popped into my head this morning as I walked, carefully watching where I put my feet on the increasingly uneven pavement (is the local council cutting back on repairing the road as well as everything else?), when I noticed, as I often do, one of the rubber bands which postmen now throw away as they walk on their rounds.  These rubber bands used to be red, but have recently changed their colour to brown.

I am always tempted to pick one up when I see one, because I often need them for all kinds of things, such as packing books together to hand on to my friends, and I baulk at the thought of buying a packet when so many lie discarded at my feet wherever I walk.  And then I thought of how odd it would look to see me bending over from time to time to pick them up (and what if I toppled over again doing this, just as I fell a few weeks ago?).  And should I then wash them to remove the street dirt from them?

So with reluctance I leave them lying sadly abandoned there, although each time I see one a little pang passes through me at the sight of so much waste.