“Wow...”
my friend sighed admiringly as I approached the table with our tray.
“How do you do it? How
on earth can you drink massive soya mochas and stay so slim?”
Briefly,
I wondered how I could answer without embarrassing her - and myself. I had actually been dreaming about this great big warm
chocolatey drink ever since we had made this arrangement. The truth
was, this ‘massive soya mocha’ was to be both my breakfast and my
lunch in one. What I was going to do about dinner was a bridge I
would cross when I came to it. It was in all likelihood going to be a
mug of packet soup with a couple of dry Ryvita, or a 65p pouch of
microwave rice – maybe with a splash of soy sauce for a
bit of excitement.
“Well...”
I finally laughed. “I guess because I don’t do it
every day...”
This
was in fact, only the second time I had done it
in as many years. The last time had been with this same friend - in
this same Salisbury coffee shop - two years before. That’s why I
had been looking forward to it so much.
I
didn’t really feel I could
say so though. Today was about catching up on what we had been up to
since last we had met. Furthermore, I had been brought up to believe
that not only is it the height of vulgarity to moan
about money, but that ‘a poor friend is a
bore friend’.
Most
people in my circle are perfectly sweet, but they simply cannot
relate. Most of my friends seem
to find it hard to believe that I could possibly be in any ‘real’
difficulty. After all, I work, I run
a car (I have to – no public transport to
take me to work), and I am middle class.
As everyone knows, middle class people
always have reserves tucked away somewhere – don’t they?
Strangely
enough though,
not this one. In fact, I can’t remember a time in my life when
money wasn’t
an issue. As a kid, I remember noticing stuff going missing from my
home most months as my mother sold things to make the rent. Nothing
was ever said.
As
an adult, economies
I now employ to
make my own rent include not
running the fridge-freezer my
landlord has thoughtfully provided, and
making sure I don’t buy any food that might require cooling. The
heating will not be going on this winter either, no matter how cold
it gets. I am already too far
in hock to the Electricity board for that. The one luxury
I will
allow myself per day will be an hour’s
worth of hot water for a
bath to warm myself up before bed.
So
how does ‘someone like me’ manage to make a shit cake like this?
The ingredients are actually very simple. Take two parents dying off
before you can get established leaving you nothing but their debts to sort out,
mix in a couple of well-timed redundancies, add two or three heaped
spoonfuls of lengthy unemployment, and serve.
Another
ingredient is to fall into the trap of
thinking that moving to an area where the cost of living is
apparently ‘lower’ (well, lower than London)
will allow your
finances to recover. When,
following another lay-off, I moved from Oxford down to Hampshire, I
stupidly believed
that given my formidable office skills, I would be able to
temp-to-perm
quickly, and get
sorted.
However,
as I soon discovered, if rents seem
comparatively ‘reasonable’ somewhere, it means that jobs in the
locale probably pay
way below the national average – with the
competition for them way above. Where I live, if you see a job
advertised offering more than £17,000 a year, you’ll be fighting at
least 100 other people for it, and in the main, they’ll be younger
- and cheaper. I recently lost out to a college leaver prepared to
work for half the advertised salary. My agency were
so shattered on my behalf, they
did a bit of digging. They told me she
lived at home with her parents. They also told me the company
adjusted the job spec to accommodate the fact she actually had no
office experience at all. To their credit,
my agency didn’t rest until they found me something.
Two
months ago, they finally managed to
parachute me into a job that had suddenly become available. It’s
a lovely company, and I consider
myself very lucky,
but like a lot of local businesses, they can only afford me
part-time. Provided I don’t fall ill and
lose a day, I net just
over £950 a month, but my outgoings amount
to over £300
more than that.
A
selection of the monthly
demands on my battered bank account
include Scottish and Southern Electricity who suck £70 a month out
of me because I dared put on the heating in my dark, damp, one-bedroom flat last
winter, and spent most of my days running my computer looking for
work (they tried to make it £115).
My landlord scores
£600, the council
want another £70
a month to light
the estate and take away the rubbish I put
out every three weeks (I don’t generate enough to put out a sack
every 7 days), and my
telephone bill is over £60 a month, less
than £5 of which is calls - the
rest is line-rental and the privilege of being connected to the
internet.
Then
there are the credit cards containing ancient debts that date back to
my early 20s. Both of which are now out of their 0% interest periods
and getting fat
each month on
fees so that even though I have never bought so much as a bar of soap
with either of them, the minimum payment actually manages to climb a
few more quid each month. Santander is the worst. Minimum payment
started off at £40. It is now £57 and rises every month – even
though I haven’t so much as touched it since I transferred a
balance to it. It rests
in pieces in a drawer.
Oh, I shall ‘go compare’ as soon as I possibly can. I
am hoping to 'go permanent' in my job, but for as long as I
am an hourly paid agency worker, no financial organisation is going
to take me seriously as a credit risk.
So that's how I stay
so slim. I am virtually starving. Even
though I am in work, in
England, in 2017.
What’s more, I am not alone in this. I can’t even join a list
for social housing because according to my local authority, I do not
constitute a priority. People like me never do.
Brexit,
Schmexit. As Monty says in ‘Withnail and I’: “Shat on by
Tories, shovelled up by Labour...” Single, childless, working
people have always been ineligible for meaningful support, and
I don’t see that changing -
no matter who is in Number 10.
So
next time you see
a thin person eating or drinking what looks
like a lot, try not to be envious. That may
be all they’re having for the next three days.
©
Emmeline Wyndham –
2017.
