Laura Craik on the dangers of hoarding tote bags

This being the art issue, I thought I’d write about my own, unique mixed-media installation, which I call ‘The Art of Hoarding Cotton Totes’.

Picture the scene. My kid has a playdate. Her guest leaves a jumper behind. The next day, I dispatch said jumper to school in a cotton tote ; one of the more heinous ones I have accumulated since single-use plastic became a no-no, bearing the logo of a local estate agent, abattoir or whatever. Excellent, I think. I’ve finally got rid of it.

But no. The following week, my kid leaves her trainers at the other kid’s house. Back they come in the same bag, shipped off by someone who has no more wish to keep it than I do.

I gaze at it angrily. I hate that tote. In fact, I hate all 86 of the totes bunched uselessly in every drawer and cupboard. And yet I can’t bin them. Millions of cotton plants died in their creation. Zillions of litres of water, pesticide and fertiliser were expended to make these virtue-signalling guilt trips, so I must use them for all eternity — or at least until the handle breaks, and even then I should repair it, sewing it on again lest Greta Thunberg haunt me in my dreams.

But Greta will haunt me in my dreams, for I have just found a study claiming that for a cotton tote to have lower global warming potential than a plastic bag, it must be reused 131 times. Even the few cotton totes I don’t hate because I erroneously believe they convey something interesting about me — the YSL one (‘used to go to fashion shows’), the polka dot one from Hay in Copenhagen (‘exquisite taste in furniture’) the star-print one from Bonton in Paris (‘quirky yet stylishly dressed kids’) — I’d be hard-pushed to use 131 times. Maybe I’ve used the Daunt Books one (‘erudite, supports small local businesses’) 20 times, but is that enough to save me from eternal damnation? Only God will judge me. Next week: My Compostable Plastic Coffee Lid Hell.

On the thorny question of how to make the world of politics a nicer place, we all have our opinions. Still, you can always count on Mhairi Black, the SNP’s ‘controversial’ MP, to come up with a new one. She would ‘close all the pubs’ in Westminster, she said on a podcast for Channel 4. On other issues at Parliament? ‘The fact that you’ve got kids running about here at 9 o’clock at night, being dragged through lobbies because there’s nobody else to watch the reins,’ she said.

When it comes to judging working-class parenting, most politicians tend not to mince their words. Presumably, if you’re an MP, different rules apply.

To have an email address is to experience a phishing email, full of spelling mistakes and malicious, ‘click on this link’ intent. But Tuesday was the first time I received one from a phisher with a conscience. ‘You have a new message from HMRC. You’re eligible to receive a tax refund of 500.00 GBP,’ quoth an email purporting to be from GOV.UK. ‘Wow, this is amazing! I’m so skint that this has really made my day,’ I replied, for lolz.

Obviously, I wasn’t expecting a reply, but several hours later came the message, ‘This is a scam don’t respond to this.’ One good turn deserves another: next time, countrygirl@hotmail.co.uk, try concealing your real email address.