A single Pritt Stick, and other things delivery drivers have risked their lives to bring you

BORED? Identified a possible need in your life and gratified it with a click? A chain of people now battling to bring it? Here’s how your purchase affects them: 

A Pritt Stick

So scared are you to lick envelopes in case you got Covid that you ordered a tiny tube of glue for same-day delivery. The van driver travelled 50 miles to bring it to you, caught the virus at a service station and indirectly killed three species of beetle with the carbon emissions.

Charcoal barbecue

An impulse buy because all socialising will be outside this summer, you fondly imagined post-lockdown summer nights grilling sausages even though you live in a top-floor flat without even a Juliet balcony. A 55-year-old fork-lift driver took too long getting this from 18ft up a shelf and was fired.

Only Connect board game

You bought this because you thought moving to the catchment area of a good school had automatically turned your family into intellectuals. But after none of you got any of the first ten questions, you gave up and sent it back. The resulting lost profits mean all shift allowances have now been cancelled.

Sourdough baking steel

Your loaf could have looked great on Instagram during the sourdough craze, which is why you shelled out on chef-standard equipment before downing a bottle of wine, dozing off and dropping the burnt black lump of sourdough in the bin. A warehouse picker lost two fingers getting you this steel, but that’s fine.

Antique glass melon cloche

Meant to be for growing melons under, but you thought it might look nice on the occasional table in the bay window and paid for next-day delivery. The driver, who has had four hours sleep in three days, span out under a bridge and caused a seven-car pile-up closing the A50 all day. He’s being cut out of his vehicle. You’re at home, irritably clicking ‘Track My Parcel’.

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Six things to not understand about Bitcoin

WANT to know how Bitcoin and cryptocurrency work? Life’s too short for that, so follow our quick guide to really not getting it instead:

Isn’t just invisible, make-believe money?

Yes, but according to so-called Bitcoin experts, all money is an invisible construct based on an assumption of value. Which isn’t true because you can buy a pastie with it, and makes you want to drop a sock full of pound coins on a Bitcoin expert’s foot ‘to see if it feels real.’

If someone just made it up, why can’t I do the same?

You can. In fact, you hereby invent Davecoin! You’re a Davecoin millionnaire, just by saying it’s real. Unfortunately what you now need is everyone else to believe it, and you’re not an elusive techie masterminding the future of the world from your bedroom, you’re a credit control supervisor from Hull.

What the f**k is Bitcoin mining? And Blockchain?

You keep hearing about Bitcoin mining, but how can you dig it out of the earth if it is not real? Is that why it’s called Bitcoin – because it comes out in bits? And what’s Blockchain – a chain of blocks? Like when you get a good run on Tetris?

Why can’t you buy anything with it?

If Bitcoin is the best thing since sliced bread, why can’t you buy sliced bread with it? You know however that it is fantastic for drugs, firearms and weapons-grade plutonium, which will be helpful if you ever move to South London.

What are these pictures of Bitcoins I see in the media? 

They are pictures created by the media to illustrate the concept of Bitcoin that only serve to confuse the issue further. See above.

Is it a giant con everyone will lose their shirts on, or the future of money?

That’s the million-dollar question. Or, the 28.55 bitcoin question, according to current valuations.