As a general rule I forget to eat while working, subsisting on cinnamon jelly beans and pistachio nuts with the occasional can of soup. But sometimes those provisions run out and I have to brave the mid-day tourist-infested city to buy food.
Today was that kind of day, and I reluctantly put down my pen to venture forth to the M&S at the Grafton Centre, on the principle that it would be less crowded than other options while offering all the items I desired.
While shopping I was mostly distracted by irritations like the fact that packages of raspberries of the same size and price were from either England or the United States.
This would be exactly why I normally shop at the farm store, relying on them to sort out what is local and fresh. I’m not any adequate kind of environmentalist, but come on – you do have to have some standards in this life.
Today speed was necessary so I picked up a simple medium sized salad, two small packets of localish (I’ve at least been to Kent) berries, two bottles of water, and a newspaper.
When the clerk rang up these selections my mouth literally dropped open with shock over the total: eleven pounds.
This is fully one third more than I would have been charged a few months ago for the identical items.
My idiosyncratic habits mean that I have mostly been isolated from price fluctuations in food since the economic meltdown started, though I have read about it. Yes, bread costs more, but I make most of my food from scratch, and stick to simple menus. Or I eat out. Significantly, what I paid for my spartan (albeit pre-packaged) lunch was more than I would pay for a noon meal at a chain like Wagamama. Even with a glass of wine.
I have noticed the increase in heating costs, and that it is simply more difficult to get fuel, though I do not drive so that has been a minor concern. Rising airline costs might have worried me, if I could travel. I had trouble rounding up money to deal with necessary repairs on the house Gabriel rents from me in the states and had to sell stuff to raise the cash, but that can be attributed to my own paralytic fear of debt.
Other than that, the spiraling economic crisis has had no direct impact on my life, because I predicted it would happen and have strategically divested myself of everything, before anyone could snatch it away.
Beyond that I do not expect to live long enough to retire, so I don’t need pension accounts. I’m not willing to put money in education accounts since I paid my own way through school and feel my offspring should also have a work ethic.
I sold the last of my high tech stocks about ten seconds before the market dropped. Not for a huge profit, just for enough money to fix a perilous staircase and paint the bathroom of a house I haven’t lived in for over six years that might be considered an investment of sorts if I charged market rent. But I’m not that person – I subsidize the people who live there because they are friends.
Canny? No. Paranoid is more like it – though I can’t really help it since the grandparents who helped raise me lived through the deprivations of the Great Depression and inculcated their values. I was taught to work hard and take care of the people I love, but there was never any aspiration for more than basic subsistence.
I also studied economics as a mandatory subject in a public administration program, and came of age during such a grim time the speaker at my graduation ceremony warned us we would never get jobs. The (student selected!) theme when I finished grad school was You want flies with that? – a jest on the concept that we wold all end up working the counter at a burger joint.
Despite my avowed adult commitment to ascetic poverty I have always had a natural sense for money, buying and selling cars and houses and ephemera at huge profits, jumping in and out of jobs or homelands or marriages with some kind of strange instinct for survival.
I have a rare genetic disorder and corresponding need to be fiscally stable to stay alive, more than many of my peers, and it takes real effort to piece together all of the subtle clues to know exactly how to achieve that state.
My obsessive newspaper reading habit has not been this bad since the early eighties, when I was a notorious and frequent contributor to the letters to the editor section of my hometown newspaper. (Back then I was probably most worried about the fact that I was, oh, dying and all, but I sublimated my fears with a campaign of criticism that saw me published, and the subject of two feature stories, before age thirteen.)
The news this week from the financial sector has been so hugely historic I can’t even begin to address it – nor can most of the press, reeling along with our assorted politicians. The fact that the crisis will have a decisive impact on the U.S. election is of course rather thrilling: I pessimistically predicted the Democrats would not secure an electoral college majority, but now I think it will be a victory in their favor and a true mandate for change.
Otherwise, the news has been horribly frightening.
Many issues that would normally be front page are being shuffled to auxiliary sections of the papers, and this is dangerous. I never read the sports pages until I use them to light a fire but I could not ignore the headline Olympic village in line for 1 billion pound taxpayer bail-out.
Apparently they were relying on private banks and developers to ante up, then make a profit later to justify the expense. As one did, before the autumn of 2008.
This is the reality of supply side trickle-down economics – all of those public private partnerships so favored under not just Tory or Republican but also New Labour and New Democrat administrations?
Watch em crash and burn. If payment is not compulsory, it will not be made.
There was a point in nationalizing industries and investing public funds in public infrastructure, not least normalizing and forcing minimum standards of service. Today we have news that numerous UK agencies, from children’s hospices to regional governments to universities to fire fighter retirement funds, put their money in accounts held by banks that just failed in Iceland. In other words, we have a big fucking mess to sort out.
The prime minister responded that he is willing to use anti-terrorism legislation to address this appalling yet, let us be clear, elective disaster.
Really? Is that why the laws were devised? Even my cynical sad little brain had hoped for better, on so many levels.
I’ve managed through excessive and semi-obscene effort to protect myself, at least for a little while. Lots of my friends and family have not, regardless of class, culture, country, education, inclination, intelligence. Most people I know work hard for admirable, basic, and rational reasons – to raise or care for family members, live decently, have a little fun.
None of us deserve the consequences of a systemic and predictable economic failure, though we will be the ones to pay.