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.

Emergency sun hat on a holiday (from a charity shop luckily).

Lol yep September is Spider season. We've had 3 in our bedroom this week... not had any others all year.

And I'm in a third floor flat in central London.

They're not hanging out on webs in plain sight. They're in the walls, the roof, the window corners, behind kitchen cupboards.

They nestle there where you can't get to them and in September they reveal themselves in the hope of getting a shag.

Mine live in our roof. I know this because we had building work done. I wish I'd never seen the underside of my roof slats (which are nailed in usually). Like spider Las Vegas.

You've reminded of the times years ago when DH first started cycling to work on some days.

He had to emergency buy some shirts as he had forgotten to pack one in his backpack or panniers. He had his suit and tie but no shirt, and this was in the days when that was the dress code all over the City of London. So he had to wait until the shops just along the road opened so that he could get one. 🤣

I was on maternity leave and just about to have our first DD at the time. I spotted the forgotten shirt. It was far too late to do anything about it and well before the days of mobile phones, but I did phone his office for him because I knew it would make him late. It did, and he was the butt of a fair few jokes about it when he rocked up in his new shirt, rather frazzled and profusely apologising for being so late. 🤣 🤣 You could say that I had dropped him in it, but they needed to know really.

About a decade ago I bought an emergency silver foil blanket , for what potential emergency I honestly don’t recall . However it has lived largely forgotten in my glove compartment for that decade in case my city dwelling , non adventure taking self suddenly needs it .

Im sure if I ever find myself in a position where it may be vaguely useful ,eg broken down at the side of the road in a snow drift I will forget it’s very existence though.

Many years ago I once had to buy an emergency watch from a outdoor supplies shop because I'd dropped my mobile phone in the sea and it had stopped working. My phone was my only means of telling the time, and I needed to know what time it was because I had to be somewhere to get picked up by DP at a specific time. It was in a tiny spot off the far north coast of Scotland and the only shop was a small general store with a coffee shop and a small camping/souvenir shop attached to it. I ended up buying a £60 heavy duty waterproof watch aimed at kayakers or something, pretty much solely to make that agreed rendez vous with DP. Literally never used it again after that one holiday.

A few years ago I bought an emergency pram! We were on holiday in the uk and had only brought a baby carrier with us because our kid was incredibly clingy, it was unexpectedly boiling hot and neither the baby or me wanted to use the carrier. I spotted a 90s Mamas and Papas monstrosity for £20 in a charity shop and thought it would do, we could donate back after the holiday. Well, the baby loved it! Best pushchair I’ve ever used haha!

Tweezers.

I realised a rogue chin hair had grown in the 27 mins between shower and leaving the house and my car tweezers had gone missing so I stopped at the chemist for a pair.

Absolutely no way I could’ve lasted the day.

I read in a highly regarded newspaper Daily Mail that, should there be a nuclear strike, it would be a good idea to have a walkie talkie radio to communicate with others. I immediately purchased one and DH hasn’t stopped taking the piss ever since. I mean, yes, it’s been gathering dust for a number of years but I’ve very firmly informed him that should the worst happen he won’t be allowed to use my radio.

Knickers on Marylebone High Street.
(For someone at Princess Grace Hospital).
I think it was around £18, the person who they were for said I shouldn't have bothered lol.

I put my clothes on a chair ready to wear in the morning. So I got dressed then an hour later, I went to the toilet and as I pulled my trousers down, a big spider fell out 😖
They don't only hide in slippers and it's been a bumper year for them 🕷️

OMG that's horrific.

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

We were on the way to my nephews wedding. We (fortunately) were early DH reached into his pocket to get his tie out to put on, only to find he had left it at home. Being a very formal do (Top hat and tails) we had to try and find a shop, but were out in a very rural part of Bedfordshire. Eventually we found a village, no clothes shops but they had a charity shop and we managed to purchase a fairly sober tie, which he has worn several times since.

There's just so much to unpick in this post...

So then OP,
Was Emergency England Rugby Chicken Jumper what you had in mind when you started the thread ? 🤔😁

I had to buy an emergency pair of gloves, in the middle of summer.

I had some (a lot) of suspect sun spots burned off and quite a lot on my hands. I tried to keep out the sun as much as possible, but I had to drive a fair distance at the last minute a few days later. About half way into the journey the burning of the sun on my hands was too much, and decided to stop at the closest shop to find gloves. In summer. In above 30 degree heat. In Africa. Not a simple task.

I eventually found a pair in a pharmacy, a pair of sleeping gloves. So I thought great, these will do just fine.

Got back to the car and took them out, to find they were the brightest of yellow with leopard print pattern on them.

I most certainly had a lot of drivers pass me and either have a giggle or a far too long gaze at my illuminating driving gloves 😂

I still have them, but use them for their intended purpose.

Sorry this is off topic (yanbu btw) but does anyone else find it audacious that spiders even go inside the house? Other species of spider and insect seem to manage to know where they're supposed to be but spiders just help themselves. I never have a worm or beetle or millipede wandering through my house looking for a shag. Orb weavers sit outside, pond skaters never try dry skating. I just about understand flying things getting lost, having to navigate up and down looks difficult. But surely the spider knows carpet and radiators aren't grass and rocks. Just taking the piss imo. At least mice and woodlice try to keep to themselves. We've had a daddy long legs spider orgy in our kitchen once, bloody disgusting.

I've got an emergency wine glass. DH tends to smash most of the glasses when he does the dishes so I've hidden one. If I have to use this one then it's time to buy more.

Oh I don't mind spiders coming in at all! Keeps the fly population down and spiders largely keep to themselves. I always apologise when I have to break a web as I know they work hard on it, but they don't pay towards the mortgage so my preferences overrule theirs.
They can set their webs up behind the wardrobes and such like places.

This isn’t an Indian Summer.

Mine is a power bank DD just ‘had to have’ in London as her phone was nearly flat and we were off to a concert at the o2. Why she didn’t charge it at home I’ll never know.
Every shop I go in now I look at their power banks and marvel at how much cheaper they were than the one we panic bought in a rush.
Even the ones they were selling inside the bloody o2 were cheaper.

@WrongWayApricot They are selfish, trespassing bastards. Luckily I have a guard kitten so I keep finding them dead instead of alive 😺

I once almost wiped my face on a spider hiding in my flannel.

About 9 months ago I bought a battery operated radio as an emergency. I'd been listening to way too much news about Putin's threat of using nuclear weapons. Some advice I found referred to the creation of shelter, complete with the stuff you'd need to wait it out in the event of a nuclear bomb being detonated not too close but not far enough either. I'm not talking all-out nuclear war and accompanying winter a la Threads. This is by far the most embarrassing 'emergency item I have purchased. Since then, I've simply turned off the news.

DH decided to take me on a surprise weekend away in rural wales when I was 7 months pregnant. He had secretly packed clothes etc for me. However, he did not pack any knickers that I had a hope of fitting in (this was not an attempt to make me wear sexy pants, he'd packed my size comfy pants). At the risk of TMI, going without was not an option as they needed to hold in pant liners due to baby bouncing on my bladder. The only knickers I could find in a suitable size/shape in the nearby shops were a sort of red and black leopard print and almost certainly highly flammable. I couldn't stop thinking of my great-aunt's advice to always wear good/clean pants 'in case you get run over' and wondering what on earth the emergency services would think if I went in to early labour wearing these monstrosities.