When I was 16 I got a job at Argos. Every Saturday, I would clip on a grey and red tie and head upstairs to the stock room. Every single Argos has a florescent tube-lit stockroom. In one corner is usually a small black printer that spools orders directly into the air like performing ribbons from the tills downstairs. On each order is a number. Each number refers to a position in the warehouse. That is what those numbers in the catalogue mean. Sometimes when it is really busy the order roll would be several feet long and I would have to run holding stacks of boxes and throwing them onto the conveyer belt. They would tumble down smashing into the wall downstairs.  There would be damp hand prints on the cardboard because the warehouse was so hot and I was fat.

Now the Argos Catalogue is fat, it, has 1118 pages. Back in Spring 1986 it only had 226. I know because it is in front of me. It has a black cover, and the word ‘Argos’ in Lamborghini Red. If you use a magnifying glass you can see all the halftone dots that make up the pictures. It cost me £40.00 from Ebay. My wife says that I talk too much about Argos. The trouble is, I think that the Argos catalogue is a wonder, it is sublime. I don’t think that there is a child in Britain that hasn’t studied it intensely or been filled with longing to climb into a ‘Castle Greyskull’ or acquire the bumps of an adult body by holding a Barbie in their hand. It is one of the things, we all have this in common. Argos catalogues…that and perhaps Beatles lyrics.  The Argos Catalogue has the hidden power of a tiny Japanese microchip combined with the excesses of 80’s capitalism inside of it.

 I want. That is really what is on those receipts the spew from the mini printer at Argos. The intense desires of a whole nation. Hidden in those catalogue pages is also an ‘I want’ of my own. I want it to stop. I want my family sickness to stop. I want to be the wall through which violence cannot smash through or try to get into my bed. I bought the catalogue from Ebay because I thought it would help me remember.

I am the tills. I am ordering up memories. I close my eyes and tear off the receipt and run to see if there is anything on the shelf. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. What you will read next is what is left in stock room of my early life.