I dunno, in the last two weeks I've had to replace my radio alarm clock (estimated at 30 years old, I've had it 26 years having swapped my trannie for it (with my Dad) when I went to university in 1981; I think my Mum still has the trannie somewhere...) and my kettle (19.5 years old). They just don't make stuff to last anymore! How can high street spending be down when I have bought not one but two consumer items in under a month?!
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Awful, isn't it? I recently suffered the bereavement of having to part with my own clock radio, bought for me by my grandmother for my seventeenth birthday. Even worse, the clock still worked perfectly, but the radio alarm had got a bit confused and every few days instead of waking me up to the gentle sounds of radio 2, it emitted the most blood-curdlingly loud buzzing which was enough to wake the dead, or at least induce severe palpitations! Had it survived a couple more months it would have been the ripe old age of 25.
It has at at least gone to a good home, as I gave it to a partially-sighted boy who lives across the street, after he found it while visiting us and declared that he loved big digital numbers. (he had to get an adaptor as it had a two-pin plug!) During that visit he also noticed my canary-yellow radio cassette player and asked when I got it. I bought it when I moved to Manchester for my first post-qualification job in 1988, so it will be 20 if it makes it to August!
I also reflected that they don't make things like that any more; however in doing the sums to work out how old they were, it also made me realise how long ago some things in my life were - a bit of a double-edged sword!