Thoroughly Modern Milly
Well, I have just made a mobile phone bill payment over the internet and I feel very clever. Online banking is so sensible! Why didn't I start doing it years ago? Oh, yes, because I'm utterly lazy and an addict of the short-term gain. However, a very small investment of time (like two minutes) has now paved the way for a lifetime of laziness and not having to do tiresome things like get washed, dressed and out of the house two or three minutes earlier to get to the bank before class. More time to spend in front of the mirror. Hurrah!
I have also just received the first credit card of my life. Neither I nor the man in the bank believed they could possibly approve my application, since I am not from this country and have no credit history here and almost none at any of the fifteen addresses I have lived at in the last five years, and my parents moved house the same day I did. In short, I am a credit papertrail cul-de-sac, but they have still given me a mastercard with which to make mischief. I am not at all sure this is a good idea. My ability to live within my means has been repeatedly tested and I have repeatedly failed. Not even when I was living rent- and bill-free in a village with no friends and no shops did I manage to keep my profligacy within the bounds of my (more than reasonable) salary. I wouldn't wish this reflection to be read as regret: I defend every penny ploughed into maintaining my reputation as an unparalleled vision of immaculately coordinated elegance, and expense is a risible rank outsider in the annals of whatever sorrows Burgundy consumption and its consequences may have occasioned over the years. I could not have squandered my money better. Nevertheless, the prospect of commercial debt alarms me, because my problem isn't cash flow, it's poverty: I have no more prospect of being able to pay for things at the end of the month, or even of the decade, than I have today. The card will not be coming out to play.
As for how I continue to spend the money I do have, I am simply unwilling resist to lure of delicious ephemera. Meals get eaten, drinks evaporate in a cloud of hangover, earrings get lost down the seat in the great drunken taxi-ride of life. One day I will have a mortgage and offspring and responsibilities and I will be jolly glad I made the glorious most of life's brief window of booze, shoes and opera twice a month. How wonderful a thing it is to be young and carefree and vain, and tipsy and well-fed and sunk in culture and beauty; and how sad it would be to realise this only when it's too late to indulge it to the fullest, when you have babies and will never, ever again be the most important person in your own life.
So, yes, I am a notorious spendthrift: the kind of person, in the words of my friend James, who would be a grand overdrawn at the bank and still think, "Ooh, pheasant...". Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur?
I have also just received the first credit card of my life. Neither I nor the man in the bank believed they could possibly approve my application, since I am not from this country and have no credit history here and almost none at any of the fifteen addresses I have lived at in the last five years, and my parents moved house the same day I did. In short, I am a credit papertrail cul-de-sac, but they have still given me a mastercard with which to make mischief. I am not at all sure this is a good idea. My ability to live within my means has been repeatedly tested and I have repeatedly failed. Not even when I was living rent- and bill-free in a village with no friends and no shops did I manage to keep my profligacy within the bounds of my (more than reasonable) salary. I wouldn't wish this reflection to be read as regret: I defend every penny ploughed into maintaining my reputation as an unparalleled vision of immaculately coordinated elegance, and expense is a risible rank outsider in the annals of whatever sorrows Burgundy consumption and its consequences may have occasioned over the years. I could not have squandered my money better. Nevertheless, the prospect of commercial debt alarms me, because my problem isn't cash flow, it's poverty: I have no more prospect of being able to pay for things at the end of the month, or even of the decade, than I have today. The card will not be coming out to play.
As for how I continue to spend the money I do have, I am simply unwilling resist to lure of delicious ephemera. Meals get eaten, drinks evaporate in a cloud of hangover, earrings get lost down the seat in the great drunken taxi-ride of life. One day I will have a mortgage and offspring and responsibilities and I will be jolly glad I made the glorious most of life's brief window of booze, shoes and opera twice a month. How wonderful a thing it is to be young and carefree and vain, and tipsy and well-fed and sunk in culture and beauty; and how sad it would be to realise this only when it's too late to indulge it to the fullest, when you have babies and will never, ever again be the most important person in your own life.
So, yes, I am a notorious spendthrift: the kind of person, in the words of my friend James, who would be a grand overdrawn at the bank and still think, "Ooh, pheasant...". Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur?
posted by Scarlet at 4:25 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home