E-bay drama

Date: 7:53am, 13 Jan 2012

I am currently recovering from a bout of e-bay frenzy. Daughter two is desperate for a trampoline after a friend promised to give us theirs just hours before it was stolen out of their garden. You have to admire the sheer ambition of the thief. Anyway, we have been looking for a cheap trampoline on e-bay since Christmas. We missed two trampolines because I got mixed up about the days [I blame teething. I blame teething for most things these days]. This week I was determined not to miss out. I primed my partner to bid on his phone. I've never done it and I couldn't trust myself with the responsibility of the whole timing thing. Timing is not my strong point as anyone who sees me legging it down the school path on the aptly named school run will attest.

Daughter two had asked every day and at many, many points during the day whether we had bid yet and had we won. She had already built huge trampoline-related fantasies in her mind and had imagined herself jumping around happily with her blue noses doing a triple back flip or some such.

She has indeed become a huge e-bay enthusiast in the last few days and has found a whole load of old toys probably located somewhere in China that she is anxious to bid for. She has offered to do endless chores to earn £5 which she says will suffice to buy them all. The thing is maths is not her best subject. She struggled for many years with the mere concept of odds and evens and when asked which secondary school she wanted to go to she replied "the one that doesn't do maths". So I am not altogether confident that she is not planning on bidding for some toy which costs £500 plus £300 postage and packing. I would like to say that I am in control of the situation, but when she goes on e-bay the baby is invariably climbing onto the table and trying to lob a DVD into the CD player while daughter three is needing help with painting a Tutankamen statue and the kittens are planning an assault on the defrosting chicken.

Anyhow, there we were at five minutes to the end of the bid, watching the seconds slip by and hoping my partner [on his way back from work] would get his bid in in that last 20-second window which he had assured us was the route to trampoline nirvana. All the kids were gathered round. I was taking a pause from writing an article on hair lice [one of my top subjects of all time]. The tension was palpable. With five seconds left to go a bid went in for £35, the top limit I had allowed my partner. "It must be Daddy," I cheered. The bidding stopped. The item had gone for £35. Surely we had won? But oh, cruel fate, someone else had bid the exact same amount just one second later and had pipped us at the post. Daughter two went into meltdown. You would have thought her life was over. Daughter two does dramatic moments like no other. "It's all your folt," she texted her dad. "Your plans never work." This was followed five minutes later by "I know it's not your folt, Daddy, but its just that I whanted it so so much."

Ten minutes later after emotions had calmed slightly we were back on e-bay, searching for another trampoline. The deadline is tomorrow. I'm not sure my nerves can stand it.

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Related tags: Ebay