The Bean Bag From Hell

How a giant black void almost drove me to bankruptcy

William Sidnam
Human Parts
11 min readSep 12, 2024
That’s me in the corner, losing my relevance. Photo by William Sidnam.

One year ago, I made the stupidest decision of my life.

I bought a bean bag.

Perhaps that doesn’t sound that bad, but it was. In fact, it was a nightmare I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.

The idea was simple enough. Tired of hurting my backside on my couch-bed hybrid that my landlords had bought before I had arrived on the scene, I longed for the comfort that a proper bean bag would deliver. As I was also eyeing up a home projector at the time, I figured that a bean bag would make an ideal viewing spot from which to watch bad movies.

So one day in August 2023, with nothing better to do, I opened my browser and went shopping. Before long, I came across a bean bag manufacturer in the UK that had good reviews on their wares. So doing the sensible thing, I selected a ‘giant’ bean bag and hit the order button. At £231.66, it was fairly pricey, but hey — I figured I could afford one stupidly expensive purchase a year.

It then hit me that due to Brexit, there were also tariffs to pay — tariffs that increased the price by a good £130. But by this point, I was so far down the rabbit hole, I’d long since passed the point of no return. I checked my bank balance, sighed, then confirmed…

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Human Parts
Human Parts
William Sidnam
William Sidnam

Written by William Sidnam

New Zealand creative based in Paris. Advertising copywriter & photographer with 3 Medium Staff Picks. Documenting metro posters at www.instagram.com/metrotears/

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