I am listening to an audible book called How To Spend Your Money.
I do not feel in need of any advice on this topic, of course. Certainly Mark is of the opinion that I am capable of spending money very well indeed. All the same it is interesting. It is explaining that it is a very bad idea to purchase things because they will give you higher status, and that you would probably be happier with something low-status and cheap.
I feel I should add that this is rarely my experience, and proved it to myself this morning by purchasing another couple of the glorious cut-crystal wine glasses on eBay. We might even have enough for everybody to drink out of them when it comes to Christmas, they make even Low Budget Own Brand wine feel like a hedonistic experience.
The book is especially relevant today because I have finally been to Asda and blown a small fortune on the dullest necessities imaginable. Washing up liquid, soap powder, black mould cleaner, you name your uninteresting household item and I have probably bought it today.
I cheered myself up by blowing another small fortune on tins of chocolate to revitalise the living room.
We have got several rather beautiful carved round tubs which sit on tables in the living room, which I try to keep filled with chocolates so that any night when we might want to loaf about drinking wine and watching a film can be accompanied by luxurious high-calorie gorging as well. This is a lot easier in the winter, when everybody is flogging off tins of Cadbury’s Roses, than it is in the summer, when the only exciting chocolates on offer come in expensively packaged boxes and cost £12.99, and I have to go to the cash and carry and purchase substitute boxes of Freddos.
I shall be purchasing as many tins as I can before they go out of fashion in Dryly Dull January.
I did not spend the entire day in Asda. Actually getting to Asda was a last minute high-speed dash, and I was late for work afterwards anyway.
I started the day with my morning walk, as always, plugging over the fells with the dogs. Actually the sun was shining, so it was not at all a grim experience. The woods are filled with trees in every shade of gorgeous autumn gold and heavy with scarlet berries, and I trotted back home feeling very seasonally chirpy.
Having a very lot of firewood helps with the sense of autumnal contentment, it is lovely to feel as though I am ready for winter, like a squirrel with a carefully curated hoard of acorns and hazelnuts. I liked the feeling so much that when I got home I pegged the washing on the line and sawed up a bit more, just to replace the wood I had shoved in the stove overnight, so that I would still have an overflowingly full wood stack despite the tiresome necessity of having to burn some of it.
This was the whole point of the trip to Asda as well, of course, so that my store cupboards would feel just as overstuffed as the wood stack. Our finances are unpredictable and tend to be a bit troubling over the winter, because there is a complete dearth of work, both offshore and in taxis, and I do not have the smallest intention of tightening my belt, so I am being prepared.
After that I cleaned out my taxi. This was not a task to make the winter go with a swing, but to make sure that I could carry on working even if the taxi inspector appeared on the rank with the customary bang and flash and puff of green smoke. Taxi inspectors send you home if your car is full of mud and dog-paw prints, which mine was, because it is that time of year.
It is clean and shiny now. I washed the outside of it at the jet wash in Kendal as well, and knew myself to be a person of outstanding virtue.
I am almost ready to face any slings and arrows of outrageous winter.
Just Christmas to worry about now.
