The Weasel is living in genteel poverty. This does not mean I have to buy Tesco Value gin and put it in a decanter. Not that bad. What I mean by "genteel poverty" is not being able to have three bottles of single malt, such as Caol Isla, Old Pulteney, or Dailuaine on the go at once, all the time. Indeed, I have a dearth of decent 16 year-olds. I am sure Gary Glitter would understand.
I have re-instated the home brew barrel this week, not entirely due to financial strictures, but because I like real ale and because bottle real ale is still beyond my price range in the quantities required by me and any 15 year old who just wants to get pished. I may even get my own still.
And so to my subject. My first wedding had high points and low points. It was "disapproved" of and we had to initially finance it ourselves, which actually was not so bad because we did it our way, including having the use of a horse drawn phaeton, which even now makes me cringe. At this wedding were two chums, one my best man and the other a good friend and colleague. Last year, the best man picked up a cool £10 million - a little consolation present for having been a partner in a very prestigious City firm of stockbrokers that got sold on. This Ten million was in addition to his already inflated portfolio that extends across the world. I am sure he looked at it as a nice way of getting the magnolia paintwork done at his flat in his listed Georgian flat. Or his villa, or his town house. I have no idea. We have not spoken since my I split from my first wife. The other chum, who I have more or less lost contact with, has had a distinguished career as a broadcaster and writer, and is not unknown on the book prize shortlist circuit.
Well, the first guy, the multi-millionaire, has an unremarkable name. If you ever met him you would assume he is a sales assistant in Halfords - the kind you would avoid because they don't actually drive a car (he doesn't). He is just another eminence grise in the City. Consequently, there is not much point in Googling him.
The other chap, the broadcaster is eminently Googleable, but not as much as me!!!!
The Weasel gets over 27,000 entries currently, whereas, me old mate at the Beeb gets less than 14,000, which is a couple of thousand less than "anal seepage". So, when I am down, and down to my last drop of Balvenie, I stare into the bottom of the glass, think of anal seepage, and chuckle at the misfortunes of my old wedding guests.
29 comments:
Anal seepage eh? Thanks for that. There's something else I could have done without learning of. I should have known there was such a thing I suppose, another failure of the imagination on my part.
Sitting, finding out about it, has inflamed me Chalfonts.
I hope you're pleased with yourself.
Having just left a reasonably-paying job and looking for another, I have a feeling that genteel poverty may be my modus vivendi for a little while yet. I had no famous friends at school, but I did attend a reunion a few years ago, and was delighted to see that the fit and active classmates of 30 years before all had bigger paunches than me, and more grey hair. I felt quite youthful. So not all bad, then.
There's a lot to be said for working to live versus living to work.
Perhaps some of us have gotten wise. What is nice, is realizing there are a few people out there, like you, who got off the merry go round.
I got off my original merry-go-round (teaching) many years ago. Since then, I have had a wide variety of jobs, the last one in Health and Safety. I left that a few weeks ago, when I realised that I was being paid a good salary (for round here) for being the company's figleaf, and that if anything went badly wrong (and the company's working methods made it likely that it would) then I would be the sacrificial lamb. No thank you. I am living off savings right now and looking for another job - not fussy what, as long as it pays moderately. As Rab says, I now work to live, not the other way round. But I can't describe the relief at being out of the H&S thing. Every day was a bucket of stress and a constant battle.
Oh, and the next job won't be in H&S, unless it's talking about it to other people!
I'm sure Anal Seepage used to post on the Scotsman...
I notice, with the possible exception of Ruth, that most of my regular and wonderful visitors have a lot of facial hair.
A generational thing WW?
Not a lot - a modicum. Half-way between a full set and jawline nakedness. And anyway, this is the internet. I could easily be a 14-year-old tanned babe in California, and this is only a disguise. (It's a pretty good one, mind you, and fools most people.)
A Hippie thing Conan?
Some of us lived through times when we thought we could change the world. Sure, a lot of the hippie stuff was nonsense, but some of it was a genuine cry for an end to war and a less materialistic society.
What we got was Blair and Thatcher and people who plunder the public purse while masquerading as socialists.
I must stop. I was beginning to regain my sense of humour.
So it was you in Morrisons the other day WW. The joker who unmanly giggled at my moustache. I was desperate to explain I'd lost my Immac but I was held back by my companion.
Yesterday I bought 2 tubes. One as a reserve.
It surely doesn't look as bad as you said does it?
A wee message for Jim. Be grateful for prior knowledge of anal seepage. Now you will recognise it when it occurs. ;)
wonderful, subrosa! Carry on and you may resemble those german women who prefer to walk about naked on the beach! (I go on a scientific basis, obviously!)
WW. I, too, had a pal who made a lot of money. In the days prior to the lottery when the Football Pools and the dream of £75.000 was most people's! He won it. I was working in London then and I returned when my father died and my pal asked me out for dinner. I went and guess who ended up paying the bill!!!!
I, too, have been through the two weddings route. Similar experience for the first ending up paying for it ourselves, as mother in law told me it was her wedding and she was arranging everything. She then hired a Victor Sylvestor type band and that was it. I did not want that hanging around my neck to be a figure of fun when drinking with my pals! I am, as I am sure you will recognise, a sensitive flower.
I had a quite important role and was extremely well remunerated, not by any means in your best man's league, but for an ordinary lad from a council estate in the north west a small fortune.
I retired and through some pretty poor decisions on my part, and a very plausible and cunning con man, I lost everything and was forced to declare myself bankrupt.
That was when my life turned around. I am happier now than I have been for years. My wife and family say the change in me has been remarkable. I do have a fair pension and the state pension and whilst not able to buy the whiskey or gin in the amounts you would like, we get by well.
Obviously I do not have a credit or debit card or cheque book but that in itself has been a liberation.
Two things which strike me as strange. Like you I lost contact with my first best man. Like you when I left my first wife I lost all but two of 'our' friends! BUT I have yet to meet anyone who still sees and is friendly with their best man! or the bridesmaids come to that!
Secondly, do you know when you want to declare yourself bankrupt you have to take almost £500 in cash to the County Court in order to be declared bankrupt! (and the best part! You do not pay income tax for one year!)
To those, who may read this and are in a pretty awful financial state, as I was, do not bother with any of those iVA companies etc. Get the forms from the County Court, they are very helpful people, itemise all your debts and overdrafts etc. and declare yourself bankrupt. You will find, as I did, that when you leave the court having been declared bankrupt you suddenly have lost all that weight on your shoulders. Nobody can bother you again!
WW I find your posts so thought provoking. Write a book and perhaps your old mate will have to vote for it in the Booker Prize!!
'Nobody can bother you again!'
Dream on buddy
Oh dear oh dear, this thread has spiralled out of control. Subrosa, I have a real moustache story that I have told before on here. It concerns and exhibition of photographs of MPs. At a press view, a friend was looking at one of Caroline Flint and remarked, "You can see her moustache". At which point she turned around and there was the subject of the portrait, in real life, looking a bit miffed.
Strapworld. Thank you so much for opening up like that. I have had my moments too, financially, and it can indeed become a burden too great to bear. I live within my means. I own everything I have and don't use credit cards. I have done this for some years now, after falling into the trap of being schmoozed by ever increasing credit limits and new cards dropping through the door every week. I kidded myself for a while that I had that money to spend, and as you know, that is not the reality.
My reality is that I have a list of priority spends that reaches into the distance - a new chicken house, tarting up the MG, a bit of furniture, etc, but the upshot is that when these can be afforded, I know exactly what I want and why I want it!
Clams, don't send the boys round to Strappy, with those offers to sell him fire extinguishers, on the basis that "he might need them".
WW, You are articulate and in the past you have shown the ability to deploy language and to convey a mood well. That's why I still read your blog.
But some of your recent posts, with so many grammatical errors and inelegancies of expression, are letting you down.
Maybe Mrs (Dr, Dame, Prof) Weasel hasn't the time to proof-read for you, but watch it! (especially two references to young teenagers). Wives don't like that for some reason.
Thanks to Strapworld. I hope I won't find myself in that situation, but I would trust the advice of someone who has been above any other adviser.
Thanks Rosy. A body needs something to look forward to.
What's wrong with 'young teenagers'? 13 year olds are young teenagers, 18 years olds are older teengaers.
Hamish, you bring out the latent pedant in me.
If Doc Weasel saw this blog she would explode with frustration, but she does not read this blog, ever, unless I insist. She knows me too well.
WV (and I kid you not) subtexua
Hamish: inelegancies.
'You' in the first sentence is neither the first word of the sentence nor a proper noun, and should not be capitalised. The exclamation mark in the fourth sentence is intrusive and would be better placed at the end. Having two sets of parentheses in one short sentence is also poor style. In your final sentence, a comma after 'been' would make your meaning clearer.
Just sayin', like.
Jim Baxter:
"Thanks Rosy. A body needs something to look forward to.
What's wrong with 'young teenagers'? 13 year olds are young teenagers, 18 years olds are older teengaers."
Are you joining in there and being deliberately provocative? (If I said you had a beautiful body, etc.)
WW: "latent pedant" redeems you.
Richard: I have my style, you have yours. As someone said, if I choose to fucking split an infinitive, let no man put together. Something like that.
Hehe, Raymond Chandler. Thanks for reminding me of that one.
Clams Linguini... I can only relate my side and six years down the line, that is my experience. I have had no bother at all.
......mind you I am six foot two, eighteen stone and a dab hand at the old judo!
....I have enough fire extinguishers!
Have a good day!
Strappy,
I guess I must be a slow reader. I sure never got to no Chapter Eleven.
You take it easy.
Bloody hell. I've read all the comments and now I know what an acid trip must be like!
Ruth - HR and H&S have similar problems, and they are structural. On the one hand, you have the law and a lot of official people breathing down your neck. On the other you have your employer who wants to do things his or her way. You want your company to be successful (because your job depends on it) but you also have a duty to comply with legislation, and sometimes those things go head to head.
My problem was that H&S was seen by the company as a necessary evil, and people would do things (sometimes quite dangerous things) behind my back so that I couldn't interfere. Some of these people were very high up in the hierarchy. I'd find out later, and sweat buckets at what might have been. I know whose neck would have been on the line (or in court) if it had. The company in a previous incarnation had a fatality on site, and the H&S guy from that still hasn't recovered his peace of mind four years later. I decided to walk away, and I'm very glad I did. I sleep all the night through now.
Thing is, I am the least like a H&S man you can imagine, and the whole "you can't do that" thing is very foreign to me. I believe in taking responsibility for your own actions, and a lot of H&S is exactly the opposite.
And we are a long way from anal seepage, I think :)
Well, I'm glad you're all a long way from anal seepage. Hooray for you. You're not as long away from it as I was when I first read this post.
Just calling by to say my moustache dissolved well. Now what do you men recommend for burns?
Thank goodness Richard is kind enough not to criticise my grammar. At times, when I have cause to re-read a post I cringe at my errors, but if I spent as much time as I should proof reading nothing would be posted.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Nighty night.
subrosa,
You ask for recommendation for burns.
May I suggest SUPPER?
Burns Suppers have been part of Scottish culture for about 200 years when Burns immortalised haggis in verse.
A terrific remedy for burns as eating takes the mind away from the burn and helps the healing process. You see Burns was more than just a poet!!
Subrosa (and all) - oops. I seem to have come across as an internet grammarNazi, when the truth is the opposite. I only ever remark on people's grammar, spelling etc if they are criticising someone else's, and then they are fair game. And my comments to Hamish were supposed to be light-hearted. If they didn't come across that way, my bad.
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