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.
