Debts

I would like to say thankyou to the fingers that are doing all the clicking. Some of the ads are pretty odd I must say but nevertheless you persist and for that I am grateful.

I was talking to a student the other day, someone that I play scrabble with online, and she asked, rhetorically, "Why is money so important?" For many people of course it is the most important thing in their lives, either in its accumulation or in the spending thereof. Some spend their whole lives working hard to make their piles, just like Mr and Mrs Dung Beetle in yesterday's pic, and then they die and leave the pile for someone else to spend.

When I was a kid, we never had very much money, but living in a village there wasn't much to spend it on anyway and so we never really felt deprived. Pocket money was spent on sweets or saved, and only when we got older were we encouraged to take on jobs in the school holidays. That mostly involved harvesting fruit or vegetables, working all day long for not very much. However it was more than the normal pocket money and it kept us occupied.

College days meant living on a grant, and although all my expenses were paid in terms of accommodation and food etc, I was still in control of very little money. My bank account never had more than fifty pound in it and was frequently empty. I had no overdraft facility and went into adult life and employment without ever having been in debt.

My first teaching job paid me fourteen pounds a week and for the first time i was responsible for managing my life, and being afraid of debt lived within my means. Mr Micawber's advice has always been there in the back of my mind and I always hate being indebted to anyone. Taking out a bank loan or a Mortgage was, for me, very stress inducing and the relief of shedding all those debts was wonderfully liberating.

I don't like to borrow and yet I am quite happy to lend. I don't often lend money but I have lent out a vast number of books, CDs and DVDs and I can never recall to whom I have lent them. Hence I have lost much of my collection.

I recently read Margaret Attwood's "Payback" - a critical examination of the concept of debt and it's place in society and literature. I recommend it as a fascinating read.

Google now owes me 80 US Dollars thanks to your busy fingers, and maybe one day if sufficient funds accumulate, I may claim it. For now though it remains a debt in my favour.