To ask if you’ve ever bought something ridiculous as an “emergency”?

[5YearsLeft]

Lighthearted.

I’ve not owned house slippers for years as an expat in warmer areas. However, now I’m back in the UK for part of the year hopefully and… Autumn? Spiders? I don’t remember this? I shouldn’t have ignored all those MN threads.

I get up every night due to pain. Twice now, I’ve seen a dark mark on the floor, shined my phone light on it, and it was a moderate-to-enormous-sized spider, waiting to get under my bare foot and/or scare me to death (which I admit, is my fault, not the spider’s). When I told the friend I’m staying with, he just NONCHALANTLY told me yes, in autumn, despite the lack of pampas grass out front, all the houses in the country become swingers’ mansions for spiders.

Also, I mean, not to get philosophical, but if they live somewhere else, and then they come here where there’s a danger of being in “public” and getting caught, does that mean that doing it in a human house is the spider equivalent of dogging?

Obviously I ordered emergency slippers for this obvious emergency. But I feel like a complete arse telling anyone that I ordered “emergency” house slippers… and I will NEVER tell how long I took picking them out (I take muuuch longer to decide whether something is worth an extra £5 than I used to).

SO. What lighthearted thing have you ordered, or gone out to buy, due to a sudden “emergency,” that you’d prefer no one ever know about?

VOTING

YABU - Slippers are magical and it’s your own fault for not already having some. You deserve a spider stand-off at 2am.

YANBU - Say less. My emergencies have smaller emergencies as pets; it’s the main reason I have Amazon Prime.

Where in the U.K./what kind of houses/ what bad cleaning habits do people have that spiders are this big of an issue?!

I reckon I see a couple a year maybe?

When we were in Italy visiting our student DD3 who was on her year abroad there it was the middle of the European heatwave and stiflingly hot.

I emergency bought a hand held, battery powered fan. It is rechargeable via a usb cable. It was €20 and is in the shape of a penguin with the fan blades on its back. I thought it was probably a daft and overly expensive purchase at the time but it was worth its weight in gold then.

I'm loving it again now during our UK Indian summer. I've named it Fanny! 😉

@Islandsadness 'bad' cleaning habits!!!
I clean religiously because I have a dog yet still get huge fuck off spiders. I'm in a ground floor flat.

I bought an emergency potato ricer during lockdown, because I couldn't get hold of gnocchi, but I could get hold of potatoes.

I now buy gnocchi in a shop like a normal person, said potato ricer was used once and sits awkwardly in a cupboard like a sullen teen at a family party.

It was really fucking expensive, too.

This is also undoubtedly the most first world / 'boo hoo, my diamond shoes are too tight' problem I think I have ever created for myself.

Spiders have little to do with cleaning habits.

@MadamWhiteleigh - I know right, we're lucky there was a Zara there and that it stocked tiny sizes. Below is store list at the shopping mall 😳

BTW, if anyone wants some size 6 Zara denim 'mom shorts', worn once I'm selling them on Vinted 😂

What a strange take

I live in an area surrounded by fields. We get loads of spiders and our house is spotless.

Surprised you haven’t seen more spiders if you’re so hot on cleaning as vibrations from the hoover usually draw them out

I wasn't being rude about the cleaning, but surely a less clean house would have more spiders and chance for webs to develop?!

These spiders are too busy to make webs…

Mwahahaha!

To hide the bodies?

I had to buy an emergency chicken jumper after one of ours had an accident and needed something to keep the dressing on and stop the others picking at it. The fastest delivery was for one with the England Rugby emblem on it, so thats what she got.

My flip flops fell apart 2 month ago after 10 years. Every single day for the last week I’ve come into the kitchen first thing to find a giant dead spider on the floor, sometimes 2. I emergency replaced my flip flops 2 days ago. I have stood on one of them in bare foot and it crunched 😱

Shorts! They were one of the best pairs I'd bought (I run and didn't pack enough) and can't find the same pair anywhere.

I bought my husband an emergency pair of "deck shoes" when he left his shoes on a rock at the beach and the tide came in (I managed to retrieve them but they were too wet to wear). They were the only shoes in his size at the nearby beach-tat type shop.

That was in 2018 and he still wears them in the summer - he loves them.

I was working abroad for two weeks. The plan was for DP to fly out with me, stay a day/night, then return home.

But he changed his mind and decided to stay the full two-weeks.

But, because he was only meant to stay one night, he didn't have any comfortable trousers for lounging around in the flat.

The only place to buy reasonably-priced tracksuit bottoms or similar was Lidl.
This would've been fine but the only thing they had were women's bright pink, velour trousers with "Sexy" written in sparkly silver lettering across the arse.

My husband had to buy emergency budgie smugglers in order to access a lake in France. They sold them in a vending machine . It was not a good look!!

I bought an emergency shirt this morning when I got out of the shower at the gym and realised that my work shirt and underwear were still on the airer at home, and not in my gym bag! If I'd gone home for them, I'd have been over half an hour late for written so I dropped into a local supermarket on the way, purchased an emergency £16 green top that I'm not terribly keen on and got changed in the supermarket toilets like a teenager after a night out..... 😂

Me too🤣🤣

You win 😂

Sorry but 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Your house can be a spotless show home and you can still get spiders coming inside in September/October to keep warm/find a spidey shag.

I live rurally and it's a yearly phenomenon.

Hahaha that's brilliant!

Wasn't it Ronan Kemp who needed an onion for a recipe and deliveroo'd it (other couriers are possible) and one onion ended up costing him ten quid or so

I’m in France right now (we arrived last night) and my suitcase never showed up. I just had to go out and buy an emergency hairbrush, knickers, tshirt, swimsuit and flipflops. All of which I would never choose in a million years, but I need right now. Im just praying my bag is found eventually and catches up with me as it has some things in it that I just cant replace.

I had to buy an emergency sunhat for DD2 in Spain in November. It was 30 degrees and baking, but every shop had winter clothes in and only bobble hats available, while my poor pasty toddler sweated away... it ended up having to be an actual baby's bonnet as that was the only thing I could find, looked ridiculous perched on top of her head.

I even got a Spanish bollocking when I wheeled her into a shop in the pushchair, limp and listless from the sun, wearing the only sundress I'd brought. The woman at the counter threw her hands in the air in horror that the poor little thing was dressed so inadequately in November. DH and I were shouting "¡Ah, la pobrecita!" at each other for ages.

Went to Las Vegas years ago, we'd been to New York first, it was February and freezing. Didn't really think about Vegas being hot, and I only had winter boots with me.

I thought it's fine, I'll go and find a cheap pair of flip flops. God knows why but DH found a proper shoe shop that measured my feet etc and I paid $65 for a pair of flip flops, that rubbed every square inch of skin off my feet.

On the way back to the hotel, I popped into Wallgreens for plasters and found a pair of $6 flip flops that I wore for the rest of the holiday with no issues.