cheaper by the dozen

My mother loves a sale. Her most recent purchase was a new furnace and I know that if she was given the option of buying one and getting one free, ours is now the only house on the block with surround heating.

Her inability to resist a good deal meant that one year, when she had to replace some broken figurines in our Christmas nativity scene (broken, most likely, by my little sister who used them like barbies in a way that would probably have gotten us excommunicated had anyone notified the papal authorities) we ended up with five kings, no Joseph and two Baby Jesuses (Babies-Jesus?). I've milked this particular story in print before, but my mother has to forgive me - my siblings and I provided much of the fodder for a newspaper column she wrote during our formative years. She's known payback was a possibility since we learned to read. (Which is probably, come to think of it, why she delayed that so long, telling us reading was "un-Canadian.")

Besides, my point today (and I do have one, don't be fooled by the cleverness with which I've so far hidden it) is that I have inherited my mother's love of a deal. I can no longer pay full price for anything without cringing - often visibly. But my mania also makes it hard for me NOT to buy things that have been marked down.

Today, for instance, it caused me to buy an exacto knife (with extra blades), a set of precision screwdrivers, and two bungee cords although I have no immediate plans to hijack a commercial airliner, customize my home electronics, or leap off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. (To be strictly truthful, the bungee cords are the mini variety, and would not support my leaping off anything, although they might support one of the cats. I'll let you know how that turns out.)

I bought them because each item, although of little to no use to me at present, cost only 30kc.

THIRTY CROWNS PEOPLE! How could I afford NOT to buy them? And why didn't I also buy the mini flashlight (complete with AAA battery) and the duct tape and the sanding block? Won't I feel the fool if tomorrow some tragedy, easily avoided with a little timely sanding, befalls me? What CAN'T be improved by duct tape? And I could be using that flashlight right now to see what's under my fridge!

I swear, I'm almost ready to pull on my boots and go back to the store right now. It's not like I'll be able to sleep tonight, knowing all those BARGAINS are happening just meters away from my front door.

And as my cousin T.C. once said (I've decided to start referring to members of my family by their initials, like they're characters in an 18th century roman a clef - or United Nations programs):

"There's a fine line between being cheap and being wise with your money.

And I'm cheap."

There's a great book by Muriel Spark called "A Far Cry From Kensington" about a woman who works in a publishing house.

I read it a number of years ago, and two things (a stupendous number, by my standards) have stuck with me.

One is the phrase "pisseur de copie" which the main character hisses at one of the company's hack writers as she passes him in a park. It's presented as one of those moments of liberating revolt we all experience from time to time (most recently a friend of mine who, faced with yet another stonewalling Czech bureaucratic type refusing to do anything to assist her said - in fluent Czech - 'I understand about your regulations. But you're a cow.' ) The sort of moment that leaves you both pleased and appalled at your own sheer gall.

The other thing I remember is the advice the main character gives a would-be author (a retired British admiral, if I recall correctly) who is having trouble making himself write. She tells him to get a cat. A cat, she says, will curl up on his desk and sleep, providing the tranquil atmosphere necessary to composition.

I've been thinking about this advice this morning, as I sit at my desk attempting to 'compose' while my cats re-enact the Battle of Guadalcanal around me.

I think my mistake was in assuming twice the cat would mean twice the tranquility. This, for all of you would-be writers out there, is not so.