I filled in an online Yougov survey yesterday about attitudes to owning things versus subscribing to services. Would I prefer to own a car or subscribe to a car share scheme? Buy CDs or sign up to Spotify? Would I consider subscribing to other services – would I fancy a monthly service to deliver socks to my door? How about subscribing to a house-keeping service, or a service to keep an eye on my young children/aged parents (delete as appropriate). Which got me thinking about how much I care about owning stuff. And if I care about some stuff and not about others, what makes the difference? 

It took a while to untangle the different things the survey was asking about. Subscribing to a security service makes sense and is an entirely different kettle of fish from signing up to get knickers through the post.  The first can’t be replaced by a purchase – what would I buy? My own security guard? The latter seems to me yet another sign of the impending collapse of 21st century civilisation – whaddya mean, if I’m too busy to buy socks I could have them delivered? Who’s so busy they don’t have time to buy socks? How bloody idle are we?

But there are some interesting grey areas, of which books are the most straightforward.

I’ve loved books all of my life and I have thousands.  But I buy very few these days, can’t afford to keep up with the pace at which I read, and don’t have any more shelf space.  So I don’t go to bookshops much (which is sad), but I do have a well-used library card. Owning the book isn’t important, giving it back when I’ve read it doesn’t bother me. My mother, on the other hand, a Depression-era baby, hated using the library: ownership was important to her and the smell and feel of a new book made her happy.  

That was then

I wrote this as a draft post years ago and never used it. The sock service link dates it to 2015. I’ve no idea why I didn’t post it then. I’ve just, sadly, edited the paragraph about my mother to put it into the past tense – she died in 2017. Now it’s a useful test. I had to pay to upgrade this blog to make sure I could still access it, which makes this the most appropriate way of seeing if I’ve re-set it properly. Without the upgrade I couldn’t develop the blog, add much to it, or use what I’ve written since I set it up almost fifteen years ago. Which made me wonder if I ever actually owned any of it at all?