From Gumtree to Tunbridge Wells

A lifelong Apple hustle that started on Gumtree in Johannesburg and ended up at a CEX in Tunbridge Wells.

Disclaimer: This post contains no politics, only Apple confessions and a trip to Tunbridge Wells. If that sounds unbearable, feel free to skip or delete it. Normal service (with actual analysis) resumes on Monday.

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I have a confession to make. One that, as my readers, I think it's time you knew about. I've been putting this off for months, but recent events have forced my hand, and I can no longer keep living this double life.

For many years, I've been struggling with a problem that afflicts millions of people around the world. A compulsion of sorts – an uncontrollable need, that if I'm being very truthful, borders on a disease. It's affected my relationships, my finances, and my ability to make rational decisions. I've tried to hide it, tried to manage it, but the time has come to admit the truth.

I am the Bear, and I am addicted to Apple products.

Not my Actual Desk (far too neat) - Photo by Patrick Ward on Unsplash

Not in a casual, some may say acceptable, “I have an iPhone and an iPad” kind of way - no. I’m a proper addict. Everything in my house is Apple - phones, iPads, watches, a stuttery old Apple TV in the cupboard, doing its best to feed me episodes of Below Deck: Down Under¹ while at the same time running Apple HomeKit lights, fans and curtains, a tired old MacBook banging around in my bag (which most of my writing gets done on whilst on trains), AirPods that blast the dulcet tones of Lewis Goodall into my ears on the way to work in the mornings… the list, I’m afraid, goes on.

I not only take note of Apple keynote events, I actually tune in - in real time (the next one is 9th September, by the by). I am the kind man who, if left accidentally unchecked, would have the entire house wired into one seamless Cupertino-branded ecosystem where even the microwave pings in iCloud and the doorbell syncs with my Apple Watch. I would happily name my WiFi network “Tim_Cook_Is_My_Landlord” (this was wisely vetoed by my husband) and feel genuinely proud about it. I once spent 45 minutes in an Apple Store just holding a MacBook Pro because the sales assistant was busy and no one told me that I should stop.

But.

There’s a problem here. Because despite my dangerous addiction to what is, in my eyes, tech beauty, I at the same time, abhor spending more money than I need to. I physically and instantly recoil at it. Which creates a conundrum.

A good Apple addict is supposed to casually stroll into a bright, shiny Apple Store with its slightly judgy but friendly sales assistants, drop £1,399 on a new Mac and waft elegantly out with their perfect white box in their perfect while Apple Store bag.

I, on the other hand, would rather spend a weekend at a Reform conference than spend that kind of money - and so this has caused a certain change in me to support my addiction. I become a scavenger, wheeler-dealer, second hand hustler.

And it’s glorious.

Which is also why CEX - glorious, slightly sticky carpeted CEX - is one of my absolute favourite places on earth.

CEX: A Land of Wonders (and weird smells) - By Edward Hands

The first time I came across one was shortly after we arrived in the UK - I think it may have been in Kilburn. Newly arrived, still finding our feet, we were walking along the high street, and there it was: a shop that seemed to contain every gadget ever made, electronics stacked high and somewhat precariously behind glass displays. Screens ripe with the possibility of flashing with bright colours, cables dangling in tangled loops and customers queuing in long lines to hand over battered old handheld gaming consoles and age old tech in exchange for vouchers.

It was like a temple to my particular kind of addiction - not just the Apple products themselves, but the possibility of getting them without parting with absurd amounts of money.

And this takes me back to South Africa a bit - if you wanted to upgrade your phone, laptop or gaming console without bankrupting yourself (tech is fuck off expensive when your currency has no actual real international value), you didn’t have CEX. You had CashCrusaders (which yes, sounds just about as dodgy as you’d imagine), but the trade in prices were insanely low.

That left you with Gumtree. Gumtree, and the quiet, unmentioned knowledge that you were one bad meeting away from being in a true crime documentary about a young cub who just wanted a new iPhone and made the wrong decision.

Once, when I was living in Johannesburg, I found myself in the parking lot of the Sun International Hotel to meet a man who wanted to buy my old miscellaneous tech. His wife and kids sat in the car, presumably ready to drive off at speed if I tried to mug him with a Nokia 3310. My own husband was slouched under the window line in our own car, occasionally looking over with a mortified expression usually reserved for watching your colleague, Donna, whose recently had her third breakup in two months sing “I will survive” for the third time that night at the work karaoke party².

The buyer and I stood there, under the glare of orangish halogen lights, inspecting ancient BlackBerrys and debating the resale values of a first generation iPad as though we were busy conducting some sort of international arms deal. I was haggling hard because I desperately (desperately), wanted an iPhone 5, which at the time, felt like owning a piece of the future. It was all a bit ridiculous, very dangerous and incredibly exciting - the sort of transaction that could either end with a successful tech upgrade or a starring role in a story narrated by Ruda Landman in a Carte Blanche³ investigation.

Anyway. When I first set foot in CEX, I thought to myself: This, is heaven. No parking lots, no side-eye, no “quickly put the roll of sweaty hundred rand notes in your sock.” Just receipts, vouchers and the smell of a thousand overheated consoles.

Back to the present day - this weekend, my addiction to Apple tech had reached another crisis point. My old Mac, bless its battered old CPU, was on its very last legs. It was so ancient that when I typed⁴, the cursor would either stay put, sprint five words ahead or constantly lag five to ten words behind. It had become like working with a drunk typist, and something had to be done.

The object of my desire, something I had been looking out for, but had not yet shown on the CEX stocklist: an M4 Mac, in green. It was finally available! I had already accumulated £255 in vouchers from earlier tech clean ups over the past few months, had another few bits and pieces to take with me, and I was ready to strike.

The only issue? It wasn’t very local. It was in Kent. At the CEX in Royal Tunbridge Wells.

Cue domestic farce. I began tearing through the house like a raccoon - my old Intel Mac was dutifully backed up and then wiped to as close to factory settings as I could get it, the keyboard was given a last wipe down and a spritz to chase away the very last whiffs of Huel. Two kindles were dug out of drawers - one of which, to my husband’s eternal exasperation, had only been purchased at Gatwick after I forgot mine on my bed stand at home on holiday. Several old phones were wiped. Games I don’t play anymore were packed up. A controller that had been banging around the coffee table drawer was wiped down. Every cable, every plug, every tiny charger head was meticulously wrapped, packed and prepared.

My poor, ever patient, ever indulgent husband, who had finished work at one o’clock yesterday morning, stood there watching me as I zipped and zoomed around the flat in a frenzy of trade-in prep. He deserves a medal - a sainthood, even. I love him dearly and he puts up with this nonsense with quiet resignation.

Off we went, the Mini loaded, me beaming with excitement and him sighing into the steering wheel as we headed for an hour-and-a-half drive to Tunbridge wells for our very last warm day of summer as an adventure. Other couples were out having picnics or leisurely walks. We were on a pilgrimage to CEX in Kent.

And oh, it did not disappoint.

I queued behind a couple who was exchanging, I kid you not, around about two hundred old Xbox 360 games and DVDs. DVDs! I didn’t even realise those were a thing! Friends Boxsets, three copies of A Land Before Time - hundreds of disks of entertainment that we now have available at the tap of a finger. His precariously towering piles looked like a cultural history of the early 2000s and the poor staff were checking them and scanning them one by one as I stood there clutching my slightly shame-faced stack of Kindles and old bits of tech.

Eventually, it was my turn.

Everything was handed in to be checked, an hour timeline was confirmed, and my husband and I went off to search for a bit of well-deserved lunch at a local pub (burgers, nothing really to write home about), and to have a little walk around the famous Tunbridge Wells high street - which is also the first time since the great outbreak of flaggery that I’ve been confronted with the phenomenon.

I was… bemused.

I had been expecting a kind of ominous grandeur maybe even a minor attempt at coordination befitting to a town, and movement, that takes itself so very seriously. That is not what we got - instead, it looked like someone had ordered a few flags from Temu, forgotten to tidy them out in any way and just chucked them wherever they could find an errant space. One flag was half-hidden behind a hanging basket, another at a drunken angle and a third already so faded it looked pink.

All rather limp. All rather sad.

Anyway - after our little lunch and walkabout, it was time to return to finalise my frenzied transaction of the day. All tech had passed. I got a B rating on nearly everything and one unexpected A rating. We made the exchange, my green “brand-new” second-hand M4 Mac was brought down from behind the glass covered shelf, and my urge for a new Apple product was sated.

Final price?

Just over £70 in cash (and a three hour round trip to Kent). I was, to put it mildly, ecstatic.

My husband, perhaps slightly less so. Still, he smiled weakly as I stroked my “new” mac like Gollum cradling the one ring, carrying it closely to my chest lest I drop it. Was it worth it?

For me: absolutely. For him: well, he still hasn’t said a word about the return journey.

Is there a point to this beyond my own questionable priorities and mild obsessions? Maybe slightly. Growing up in SA, where an iPhone can set you back R25,000 when my salary at the time we left was R14,000, I had to learn to hustle. To make, what could loosely be called, a plan. To barter, swap and stretch every Rand - and now pound - as far as it could possibly go. The habit has stuck, even if the venue has changed from Gumtree parking lot meetings to sticky-carpeted CEX counters in Kent.

So yes, I am an addict. And yes, my poor husband deserves canonisation. Also, yes, this post is being written on my shiny green Mac, obtained with vouchers, Kindles, old tech and small dash of cash. If you’re judging me - I don’t blame you. I judge me.

But, if in a year’s time you see a bear barrelling down the motorway towards another provincial branch of CEX, just know:

Some people play golf, some people collect stamps and others crochet. I trade my way through the Apple ecosystem, one slightly embarrassed husband at a time.

Wishing everyone a lovely Sunday,

Best,

Bear

1. Captain Jason is incredibly compelling.

2. Based on a true story.

3. If you know, you know - the Carte Blanche theme tune was the ultimate sign that the weekend was now, well and truly over.

4. Which I do an absolute shit tonne of as you may have noticed in this post alone.