Auct-Ennui

“The frisson of regret that overcomes us when we see something on eBay we owned as a child” – a portmanteau of auction andennui, the French for boredom.

Crediting this neologism to a friend of his, Harry Pearson described auct-ennui in The Guardian:

Auct-ennui is at once plaintively nostalgic and red-bloodedly fiscal.

The classic symptom of auct-ennui is the slapping of the forehead and the mumbling of the words, “Striker by Parker! We used to play that on the carpet in the front room … Blimey, if only my mum hadn’t given my set to the scouts’ jumble sale – I’d refrained from drawing on the box in felt tip in a doomed attempt to make it appear that the photo illustration featured my team – and half the players’ push-down heads hadn’t got wedged between their shoulders so that they looked like entrants for a Gladstone Small look-alike contest, then it would now be worth … £28.75! I wonder what the Action Man England footballer kit goes for?”

Strangely the very thing that causes auct-ennui also provides its cure and its antidote. These days the search for times that were lost can be ended at the click of the Bid Now! button.