Money has been in my thoughts a lot lately because it has been in desperately short supply. New Job hasn’t reached first pay day yet but already I am far less concerned about money. There’s some coming, that’s all I need to know. Not very much, but enough.
It’s interesting that everything is seen in terms of money now. If you get ill, you cost the NHS money. Well, we’re the ones who paid in to fund the NHS through a Ponzi scheme called ‘national insurance’. We paid all that money so we could get medical help if we get sick. If you get sick by a non-approved method, they don’t want to treat you but they also won’t give you the money back. That is a protection racket.
To the NHS, saving money is more important than saving you. Arrive at hospital sick and old and they will kill you off to save money. You’re too old to work so you won’t be providing them with any more free cash so they don’t want to keep you.
The cost of wars is measured in cash rather than corpses. Deviate in any way from the prescribed lifestyle and you will cost the economy money. Turn up in court penniless and you’ll get a slap on the wrist. Turn up for the same crime with a fat bank balance and they’ll bankrupt you. The punishment does not fit the crime. It fits the perpetrator’s ability to pay.
Whenever there’s any kind of natural disaster, the money cost comes way above the homes and lives lost.
When I started in science, we were chasing knowledge. If we couldn’t get any funding bodies interested in a particular project we would try to do it using recycled equipment and whatever we could get for free or for little cost. I used to check out the scrap piles at one place I worked and I am still using resprayed retort stands and repaired stirrers I rescued from there. By the time I was made redundant in 2005, such backroom activities had been quashed. Full economic costings for all projects and make sure they make a profit. We were no longer seeking funding for projects. The funding was the end-point.
It’s not just ‘authorities’. Everyday people think they have to have massive amounts of money just to live. You don’t have to shop at Harrod’s when you can get pretty much everything essential at the pound shop.
Local pound shop is great. I like ‘wakey water’ in the mornings rather than coffee. Red Bull is over a pound a tin. The pound shop has a clone product which is just as full of caffeine and tastes the same – four for a pound.
Pound shop also has those old tinned pies I remember from my youth. I thought they had gone forever. You cut off the lid and put the whole thing in the oven. I bought one to see if they were as awful as I remembered and they were exactly the same! Steak and kidney puddings are two for a pound. Little pork pies, four for a pound. Go in there with thirty quid and you won’t be able to carry your shopping home.
Go in Harrod’s with thirty quid and you might get a cup of coffee.
Look at this quote -
Three out of ten said money was more important to them than their friends, while 28 per cent named it as more of a priority to them than spending time with their family.
Thirty percent of people in this country put money above family and friends. Does anyone else find that horrifying? The quote comes from an article claiming that people need £1,700 a month just to survive.
Rubbish. If I can raise £1000 a month I’m comfortable. At that level I can afford decent malt whiskies without worrying, and all my monthly bills will be paid, and there’d be a trickle going into the reserve fund. More than that and I’m rich (and probably drunk most of the time) but still, the only real difference would be more malt whisky and more going into reserve.
I can survive on a hell of a lot less, and have. For the past few months I’ve covered the bills and fed myself, had some whisky although only cheap but decent blends, and only dipped mildly into overdraft when bills arrived before income. Credit card is out of action, I won’t use it when I don’t have the means to pay it back because I landed in deep trouble with that sort of thing many years ago. So I never did drop to survive-only levels because I could still get my tobacco and booze. I even managed to start rebuilding the railway in OO, and that is definitely frivolous spending.
As I already stated, finances are on the road to recovery and when the bills are covered I don’t think about money. I am not interested in Savile Row suits or fancy cars or posh interior nonsense decorations or keeping up with the neighbours or any of that stuff. As far as I am concerned I am streets ahead of the neighbours because I have several bows and know how to use them, so when the shit hits the fan and they are trying to save their precious glass ornaments from the mob, I’ll be making kebabs out of mob members. One bow , at least, will easily penetrate a car door. I tested it in the garage and it went through the straw target, the plywood behind that, the pallet holding it all up and the garage door. Good thing I bought one of those rubber grips for pulling arrows out or it would still be there.
My one concession to peer pressure is that my furnishings are not orange boxes and tea chests. Not much of it is new though. It’s amazing what people throw away, when all it needs is a good clean or a new coat of varnish.
Socialising with friends is the first thing to be sacrificed for a quarter of people when money is tight.
Socialising with friends does not need to cost much, if anything. For a three-man Smoky-Drinky, we can get a bottle of high-end malt if we put in a tenner each, if times are hard we can get Teacher’s or Grant’s for less than a fiver each. Sometimes we opt for two bottles of blend rather than one malt. Bigger smoky-drinkies need more bottles but the cost per person is the same. Socialising does not need to involve visiting expensive places. Sometimes it’s just a coffee and a chat. If your friends are only impressed by how much you spend, they aren’t friends.
Sure, some people want yachts and Lear jets and Bentleys and good luck to them. They can work for them and buy them and that’s just fine and dandy. I don’t want those things but I don’t begrudge them to anyone else. If you want to live in a mansion and you’re prepared to put in the work and pay all the taxes involved, good luck to you. Just don’t end up living there friendless and alone. There’s no point having a long dining table and a ballroom if nobody but parasites ever visit you.
As for me, I don’t want any of it. I’d rather have friends than money.
I think they are Frey Bento’s pies mate, I too took a trip down memory lane a couple of years ago and they hadn’t changed at all, the pastry top still rises like crazy and gravy pisses over the side of the tin onto the baking tray just like it did all those years ago. There’s precious little meat in them too. By the time it’s finished there’s not a lot left of anything except for a ton of pastry. :-/
Fray Bentos is right, I’m surprised the expiry dates weren’t in the 1970s. I was amazed they still made them. There are also Goblin products in there and those old compressed bacon things that are a bit like Spam that you fry. I’ll try those next. It’s like being a teenager again but without the zits.
Leg, you and I would get along well.
Well, except for the whisky, but I won’t object if you don’t mind my vodka.
:>
MJM
Since you won’t drink my whisky and I won’t drink your vodka, we’ll get along just fine
Priceless!!!!
I got one of those fray bentos pies in a tin the other week in poundland but gave up trying to get the lid off it. My tin opener gave up.
Poundland also sell the old vesta curries . Two wee bags. One rice and one gluey curry (tasty). A trip back to 1973. Washed down with blue nun. They had that vesta risotto as well but that was a step too far.
I haven’t seen the Vesta curries in ours. I’ll look harder. The risotto… no, that was a once in a lifetime experience as I remember.
Particularly agree with your final para LI. People round here take the piss out of me because I drive an 18 year old Honda. One of my neighbours suggested that I “get rid of the piece of shit because it lowers the tone of the neighbourhood.”
He was less than impressed when I pointed out that his Merc was just a glorified german taxi cab and that the tone would be raised far more quickly if he fucked off and lived somewhere else!
I have never been impressed by flash cars and big houses. I spend my dosh on travel. Luxury travel. I earnt it and will spend it how I like to spend it. You want a BMW. Good luck to you. It simply doesn’t interest me…but it would be a boring world if we all liked the same thing!
I have similar neighbours. If only I still had my Mk 1 Fiesta, entirely brush-painted with Hammerite…
Glad you have a couple of bows against the day it all hits the fan. I build bows and fletch arrows. Make the points out of beer bottles or ashtrays(urinal porcelain is also good). A local councillor (in Holland) once opined that archery gear should fall under the Weapons Act (crossbows do , in fact). I told him I had enough stashed to start a petty medieval war and he could have the lot. I would be up and running gain in a fortnight. Or did he want to ban wood? (Oops! You will now be thinking of writing that into a story, won’t you?) A 50 pound draw strength bow will penetrate right through any animal in the UK. If you can wield an 80 lb one, that will go right through a Volvo. Been there, done that. As for the regular payday, I now get a pension every month. Not a lot, but it certainly helps. Been self employed for a quarter century. It only gets better.
I have a fletching vice but haven’t yet practiced enough to trust myself. Arrows are available locally and cheap so I have time to get it right.
Eight more years until a small pension kicks in, so this little job covers the bills. I have been noticed by the boss’s boss and will have to resist calls for promotion (having a doctor of microbiology, especially one who has worked on food-borne diseases and intestinal infections, in your retail-cleaning organisation is apparently a desirable thing). I don’t want to progress through the organisation, I just want to cover the bills.
40 years ago I enjoyed a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie, and kept the tin. Soldered to an empty cat food tin (didn’t enjoy) it made a perfect bench light for my workshop. It is still in use, but getting a tad rusty.
Well, the prospect of replacing that lamp with a new one is here, courtesy of Poundland. In fact, you could eat the pie, make the lamp and probably sell it for more than the cost of the pie!
A trip down memory lane there, Frey Bentos, Vesta and Goblin. All sustinance food when I was a student in Nottingham in nineteen hundred and fuckin freezing seventy. The pies actually used to have more than pastry and gravy in them back then, I chipped a tooth on the crispy noodles from a Vesta Chow Mein, but the Goblin tinned burgers, although nothing like real burgers, more like faggots, were very tasty. You know just like haggis is tasty if you blank out which bits of animals you are actually eating. God knows what’s in them, but give Goblin a go next.
Have you tried Freecycle for the fixtures and fittings Leggy? We do very nicely for stuff down here in Bristol from them. We got a sofa, various didgi-boxes for our various tellys, a synthesiser, rugs, oh you name it. Definately a place to visit in these straightened times.
Goblin steak and kidney pudding is very nice. Small, and microwaveable, so not really a historic one but they did do a good job of it. I remember those tinned burgers. Poundland is deserving of some more detailed investigation, I think.
Re bows ‘n arrows: y’all might enjoy reading “Earth Abides.” It’s a 1970s era “After world disaster” sort of novel, but it’s one of the better ones. I believe they used pennies beaten into arrowheads in it: I would think that might be superior to broken bottles because, although it might not be quite as sharp at the tip, it would be far more reusable. I’d think your pointy glass or porcelain would have a tendency to degrade after a few hits.
- MJM
We’d better re-learn flint-knapping.
Easy enough to reset the edge. Only 15 minutes to make a new one. In the field (provided you have your elk antler with you). I have forged nails into arrowheads. Need heat a hammer and an anvil.