No. 33 The Price of a Pukka Pad

Hard to believe, I know, but this nonsense doesn’t write itself. There’s a crack team of writers, blacklisted from every other writing gig in town following an ill-advised attempt at writing the definitive Gary Glitter biography, who labour day and night to assemble the dandy delight that sits before you now.

But obviously, such frivolity and complete lack of respect for grammatical law has to start somewhere. And indeed it does. With the humble Pukka Pad. The thinking man’s writer’s weapon of choice. Hot dingle!

But horror of horrors, it would seem that not even as innocuous a slice of stationary as this is immune from the ravages of greedy businesses hiking their prices and laying the blame firmly at the door of the credit crunch/ economic crisis/ the price of oil/ impending recession/ the end of the world. Please delete as appropriate.

As it happens (to quote Jimmy Saville), I was in the market for a new Pukka pad – three of the beasts to be precise – as the one I’m presently scrawling in, The Official Not What it Used to Be Journal of Idiocy, has but a few pages of sterling service left in it before retirement and a drawer beneath my bed beckon. Now the going rate for a 200 page, A5 Pukka pad about seven months ago was between one of the Queen’s pounds and £1.50. Because of a heroically monumental consumption of alcohol between then and now, I don’t remember precise figures.

Anyways, it was to WH Smiths I embarked, a spring in my step and some shiny new pennies in my pocket. However, upon seeing how many of these shiny new pennies said stationer wanted in exchange for the pad, their lustre quickly became lacking.

“Stripe me!” was the cry. £2.99??? And that was with 50p off for good behaviour (who said the economy was on its arse?).

I was quite literally banjaxed by this atrocity of inflation. Even moreso when I noticed the cover proudly declaring ‘Made From 100% Recycled Materials’. This meant I’d already written on the thing once and now WH Smiths wanted me to weigh in with an extra two quid to write on it again. Did their devilry know no boundary?

I can recall – as I always do – the great potato famine of 1995, when chippies the length and breadth of the nation hiked the price of a bag of chips, stating the poor crop had led to a shortage of spuds. Did they drop their prices once the market in starchy root vegetables had once again picked up? Did they f*ck!

Will the price of a Pukka pad drop once we’ve clawed our way clear of the jaws of doom? Will it f*ck!

They say that the good times are over (wish somebody had notified me that they’d begun) and it’s the end of cheap food and everything else, because they know that even if your average Sheik had a crisis of conscience and dropped the price of oil to two pence a barrel, prices would remain as they are now. Same goes for electricity, gas and everything else we’re being charged well over the odds for.

It’s greed that got us into this mess and greed that will keep us there. The death knell of capitalism? Don’t make me laugh. As long as there’s one man willing to let himself be exploited by another, capitalism will remain the religion of choice for Earth PLC. And it’s me that pays the price with my bloody Pukka pads.

£2.99! I ask ya?

The amount those swines were asking prompted a retreat by myself of a swiftness that would’ve seen me go far in the Italian armed forces. Eventually it was Rymans (another store that’s not shy when it comes to relieving a wandering scribe of his hard-earned currency) that came up trumps when they accepted £1.99 and a bondship on my first three children for each of the pads. And these were the full fat Pukkas too. None of this recycled rubbish.

A proud saving of three pound over Smiths, which I promptly spent on cheap booze and even cheaper women.

Suffice to say, Jeffman is living in fear of the next time he has to purchase a Pukka pad and what monstrosity of a shopkeeper’s fevered mind he’ll find on the price tag then. Gone are the days of the cheap Pukka pad. We’ll all just have to get used to it.

* This article was sponsored by Asda Smart Price pads; for those times when only ‘whatever the cheapest you’ve got’ will do.

You have been warned!

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