So I will apologise in advance, this post may get removed by admin for breaching advertising guidelines (which actually means you won’t be reading this, so I am not sure why I am apologising....!)
Anyway, this time I want to talk about Panini World Cup stickers. Now, ok, I hear you say, but Greg, your profile suggests you are 39 years old - what, did you really do that badly at school - is that why you are doing something which is clearly designed for an 8 year old?
Well, I do have school age children, but let’s face it, it was me who spotted the shiny new album in the supermarket and gently guided my children away from the chocolate bars and Pokemon cards into its path.
And so, there we were, bereft of 4.99 (don’t get me started on the ridiculous cost of these stickers nowadays - it’s as if the makers know that it is grown adults buying these things not children!), we scampered home with haste to open our (my) new toy.
We (I) ripped open the outer packaging to fill my lungs with the intoxicating plastic of the sticker packets.....
And that’s when my world crashed around me and the evil of April sunk into my heart again.
The brain is a funny thing. It is very clever, but boy is it massively faulty. Because the very second that the smell travelled up my nostrils through the nerves (or whatever it travels through) to my brain, I was immediately transported back into my hospital room that I spent 47 consecutive nights in throughout the whole of April 2016. I suddenly remembered that the last time I smelled that once luscious plastic smell of Panini stickers was when I was stuck in an isolated hospital room having all sorts of lovely chemicals pumped into me, convincing myself I was going to die and crying every 20 minutes.
And it is worse for my wife. For I said that the brain is a wonderful thing and during that time (with the help of significant mind-altering drugs and a lovely team of psychiatrists and psychologists), I managed to take myself off to some magical other-worldly wonderland. But she had to see every grisly second of what I became.
I said to her yesterday, “You know what, Panini stickers don’t feel quite the same anymore”. She replied, “why do you think I’ve gone nowhere near them”. And that said it all.
So April, once again, I thank you for destroying what little over-priced enjoyment I could have wrought from a beloved childhood memory. You never cease to amaze me about what pleasures you have in store.
And so the Panini album has been dutily transferred into the ownership of my 9 and 5 year old.
And maybe when all is said and done, that’s the way it should be.
