How anyone in this expedited-delivery-obsessed century opts to wait 6-8 weeks for anything is a baffling yet fascinating notion. Patience is a ‘retro’ concept and kids scoff at the very thought. Heck, don’t we know our way around the IKEA warehouse like the back of our hands and are on first-name basis with the next-day couriers? How many times has the UPS delivery man made our blood boil by playing ding-dong-ditch with a yellow ‘We Missed You’ slip? Ergo, anything that takes 6-8 weeks to produce and deliver is 1) a long-term commitment involving a completely different mindset 2) a bloody tease, 3) from a dragon egg.

Perhaps it’s prescribing to the same ideas as stumbling upon a £10 note in the back-pocked of a pair of long-neglected jeans and feeling like you’ve earned some new cash, fair-and-square. Or signing for a parcel from US/Australasia, the one you ordered half-drunk a week back, and feeling rather as you’ve received a surprise gift. The one you bought with your own money.

Customized Trainers – MySwear via Farfetch

Six weeks is how long it took for this MySwear beauty to be produced, and it did not disappoint. I’d spent just about the same amount of time swirling the virtual shoe around and around (and around), deciding on colour and texture like my life depended on it (of course, then ending up choosing the most basic colours, because sense). And all I can think is that for six weeks they planted the little MySwear seed, watered it, and fed it some corn until ripe. Week of Christmas, it arrived in its wooden-boxed, woollen-dustbagged, customized glory – and of course it felt like a gift by then.

Now I just wish they have a dissertation option so that when I time-travel back to 2010 I can just feed it ‘Cream suede, white sole, ivory laces’ and wait 6-8 weeks for good results.