[Previous entry: "Editing"] [Next entry: "St Helens" ]
Broke
20 January 2006
Ah, money stuff...
Gentlemen, of course, never discuss financial matters in the open. Writers, on the other hand, seldom talk about anything else. I guess it's because we see so little money, and less with every year that passes; we're like birders, mournfully watching the species dwindle until even the common sparrow is a rare, rare sight.
Or in other words - did you guess it? - I was at the bank yesterday. Went in for a twenty-minute chat, a bow at a venture; came out after an hour and a quarter, with my withers thoroughly wrung and a very heavy bank loan on my back. It does kind of see me secure for the next six or seven months, but it'll take the same in years to pay it off, and I'll have no money in the meantime. No more frivolling my cash away on books, on bottles of wine; no more spending anything, at all, ever.
Still, there must be pleasures to be had from parsimony; I shall seek them out, and report back if I find any. As a first step, a sign of things to come, I had stale bread to my lunch today. Admittedly I did toast it; and I did bedevil mushrooms and chicken-livers (with cream, cayenne, mustard, Worcestershire sauce) to go atop it; but all of that is cheap too, and stale bread is still stale bread, however you blanket it. Conspicuous virtue, I call that: my only luxury hereafter.
© Chaz Brenchley 2006
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.