I met a friend for lunch the other day. We had the following conversation:
Him: You are like Kerry Katona.
Me (feeling a bit like an elderly, out of touch member of the judiciary): Who the hell is Kerry Katona?
Him (sensing my concerns): Formerly part of a popular beat combo known as “Atomic Kittenâ€, m’lud.
Me: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. [Pensive pause] Why am I like Kerry Katona?
Him: She’s very rough.
Me (coldly): Your point?
Him: I think her mother was a junkie.
Me (very coldly): Your point?
Him: She’s just been declared bankrupt but right up to the moment she ran out of money she kept spending like there was no tomorrow.
Me: Yes, I am just like Kerry Katona.
I am cross with the world’s bankers. For the next couple of years we had expected to be poor as one of us is undertaking a brave new venture in the world of work. And, unfortunately, brave new ventures are often associated with a dip in earnings. Furthermore, also unfortunately, the one undertaking the brave new venture is the one who previously made most of our money. However, we will be poorer than we had anticipated as, alas, our savings from our days of relative affluence have now disappeared in the crash (who, no really, who could have predicted that the greatest economic crash since 1929 would happen on the one occasion we actually had money in the stock market?). We will be living on baked beans for the next two years. A particular pity since none of us is very fond of baked beans.
My lovely aunt who is in Dublin for a couple of days has decided to outwit the bankers by spending all her money now. She took my brother and me to dinner last night at Guilbaud’s which pretty much did the job. It made a very pleasant change from baked beans.
You know the way we all put our faith in the market economy instead of religion? Is anyone else feeling that this was all a bit of a mistake in retrospect? Just curious.
ooh ouch.
I’m thinking myself that this was not the best of times to have given up a well paid job to do something frivolous like write books. But am feeling quite smug about having sold our house a while back and put the money in a nice … safe … bank…
Your aunt is right: spending it all might well be the answer
Oh I feel your pain. I am currently spending much of my life watching telly and eating beans. Tis mighty dull. At least you have the distraction of husband/offspring?
But I am told by worthy friends that the answer is to grow your own veges – occupation for said offspring and also means bargainous soups etc. I lack the space and the motivation. and I realise there would undoubtedly be three weeks of LOADS of vegetables when I end up having to do more work to pickle/blanch/do something constructive before they rot and the rest of the time it would just be weeding. And weeding is duller than reality TV. In my humble opinion, m’lud.
i recommend varying the beans with ramen packets. a different texture, at least.
we were poor before the crash, and still poor now. It seems we are a bit less poor than before, because richer ones are now less rich, closing the gap slightly.
we eat a lot of soup in our house.