We have been doing sums.
I imagine that all the rest of the UK is doing much the same, albeit for different reasons. I suspect that financial anxiety is being encouraged by all the trailers the Government has been putting out, advertising Winter Of Discontent The Sequel that we are expecting this year.
I am always a bit discontented in winter anyway, because of not earning very much money and also because my feet get cold even with my sheepskin boots. I am wearing these already, which does not bode well for the months to come.
Anyway, given the dire warnings issued by the august Daily Telegraph, and the nights-drawing-in approach of winter, we had a jolly good financial contemplate this morning, the sort that comes with columns of numbers and tongues sticking out and inky fingers. Obviously the very worst of our financial crisis is over now that people are allowed to come to the Lake District again, but nevertheless, some preparations for a dark and discontented winter might turn out to be necessary.
We made a list of things that are going to cost us money, and added it up.
We started off with the Autoparts bill for the taxi MOT and thought that probably we won’t be having any more nights off for a while.
Possibly not for ever.
We wrote Autoparts Bill on the list, which should have had a skull and crossbones next to it instead of a number with too many digits.
Then we wrote all the dull things on the list, like Council Tax and Mortgage.
We also remembered that we want to go to the theatre in Manchester at Christmas, and then again to the theatre in London in January, and such joyous hedonism needs some anticipatory saving up.
We wrote Savings For Our Holidays on our list, underneath School Fees.
I am looking forward to these events with my whole soul. Somebody wrote a book about being happy which said that the best way to have a happy life was always to have something bright and lovely to which one can look forward, and they were exactly right. The worst thing about the horrible bat-flu episode was that even every present moment was made dreary by the total absence of any happy moments to come.
In fact we have now got lots and lots of happy moments to come, which is partly why we needed a little financial think. Oliver and Lucy are coming home in a week or two, and after that we are heading south because of Number One Daughter graduating from university.
Mark and I are not going to the actual graduation ceremony. Number One Daughter was only allowed to invite two people, so after some family consideration it was decided that the people who could best be relied upon to dress respectably and behave themselves at such an event, were Grandma and Grandad. The rest of us, being me and Mark, Number One Son-In-Law, Lucy and Ritalin Boy, will be joining in with the partying and eating and drinking bit later on. Oliver, alas, will be back at school by then.
I like the sound of it very much, and it is a bright thing waiting for us in our futures.
All the same there is some travelling involved.
We have got to leave Oliver at school in Moray on Monday evening and present ourselves in Surrey on Wednesday morning. It is going to be a bit of a rush.
This is a bit of a niggling worry, because everybody knows now that even if the world does not run out of fuel in the near future, we can expect that fuel prices will go up.
The whole round-trip journey will be eleven hundred and eighty six miles. This does not include the one we will be making the week before, to collect Oliver from school, although this is a mere nip around the corner, being only six hundred and fifty miles.
We wrote Fuel for October Trip on the list.
Then we wrote next to it: seven hundred pounds, and chewed the pen a bit, thoughtfully.
We are probably single-handedly responsible for most of the fuel crisis.
Mark said that he had better give the camper van a service and a new cam belt first, so we wrote that down as well.
In consequence of our calculations, we are now sitting on the taxi rank, eating salad made out of our very own home-grown carrots, and contemplating a newly economical lifestyle for a while.
I do not mind in the least.
We have got lots of happy moments to look forward to.
