How do you actually use up a salary of £18 million?

December 2008 blog

There is a poster which reads: ”I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” How true. Being short of money is soul-destroying, marriage-wrecking. Repeating “no, we can’t afford it” to bright eyed children is very dreary.

Who doesn’t want enough money to change the car, redecorate the house, take weekend breaks, spoil children - occasionally?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to work hard, be good at what you do and earn lots of money. I've nothing against people getting rich - I only wish I were among their number.

But there’s rich and there’s stupid money. Let’s take the example of a UK celebrity recently in the news with his contract worth eighteen million over three years.

One million, OK. Two million - most of us could get through that with a bit of imagination. (Never wasted hours planning what you’d do if you won the lottery and realised that 1 million is not quite enough?)

But £18 million? How do you actually use up that much money? Does any sane person want a gold-plated yacht? Need homes for all the family in the Middle East? What kind of altered state are you living in if you earn several million a year and still feel hard-done by if you don’t get a few more million as a Christmas Bonus?

There's a level of wealth where you stop envying the person and start to feel a bit sick.

When the elite restaurant Maxim’s opened a branch in Moscow soon after the fall of communism, I was sent to review it. In warm boots and thick winter coat I picked my way over penurious, bewildered Muscovites (this was long before the super rich Russian oligarchs appeared on the scene) who were, literally, hawking family treasures on the pavement in order to feed their families bread and potatoes. I’m not sure if the sumptuous curtains inside the restaurant were to hide our food from the destitute or hide the destitute from us while we ate; either way, I couldn’t swallow.

So, while I’d like to be, say, filthy rich, I don’t think I’d be any good at being obscenely rich. Even could I afford it, I’d never be able to spend 260, 000$ on a bag. (Chanel’s alligator and diamond tote, in case you’re wondering). I don’t think most of us would.

Which is why it’s not surprising that, while we may be worrying about savings and mortgage payments as the credit crunch starts to bite, most of us are relieved that the crazy greed-credit-debt-credit-debt carousel has crashed to a halt. We won’t have to listen to people talking about how much their house has risen in value, for a start.

More, importantly, we can take a fresh look at what makes us enjoy life? Huge overdraft? No. Bills we can’t pay? No. Hiding from the Postman? No.

Would we rather a big car or good friends? Kids who have everything or kids who are happy?
Loving husband or new pair of shoes? (OK, that last’s a tough one.)

For a while there, we were persuaded that the road to eternal happiness lay in buying lots of stuff we didn’t need and couldn’t afford. The credit was never real money, so we had this hallucination that the debts wouldn’t be counted in real money either.

(If Jesus got upset by the Romans turning his Father’s house into a temple of money-lenders, you can’t help wondering what he would make of todays banks, not to mention ”futures” markets and hedge funds?)

Except that deep down we knew that there must be a glitch in the argument. All that time we were in denial we were also a bit scared which is why it feels good, albeit dull, to find that we’re back in the real world now. Greed and acquisition, fun for a while (and motivating) are the opposite of contentment.

Christmas is a good time to make the re-adjustment. Don’t feel pressured into going for one last bank-account-emptying spree. Ditch the glitz and try and squeeze a drop of spirituality out of this most family-centred of festivities. Make it a challenge to see how much warmth and laughter you can create with as little cash as possible. This issue is devoted to helping you do this.
And thank your lucky stars no-one’s giving you the Chanel tote this Christmas! It would just make you look naff.

Happy real Christmas!

****************
The last of our eight unplanned puppies is about to head off for her new home. They have cost a fortune in time and puppy meat. We’ve spent hours clearing s*** and washing floors It’ll be a relief to see the back of them. And sad.

They’ve given us two priceless insights into our lives. First, if your days are too busy to stop and have a tug of war with a puppy or take it into your arms for a time-wasting, heart-warming cuddle then you need to re-evaluate your priorities. Second - when did any of us dreary adult humans last greet a new day with the sheer, tail-wagging delight with which they pour out of their pen on a cold, frosty morning?

The December Rendezvous is out

The December issue of the Rendezvous is out and being distributed. Please pick up your free copy at one of our regular distribution points - or subscribe to enter prize-draws and receive the magazine ahead of everybody else.

My husband sneaks about replacing light bulbs with low energy tubes

November 2008
Now that we have entered the dark months when children catch the morning bus by starlight and come home after nightfall, I love nothing more than drawing the curtains, turning back the covers and turning on the desk and bedside lights to make their rooms cosy and welcoming to celebrate their return.

To me, there is nothing more depressing than entering a dark room or returning to a cold, unlit house after an evening out.

I grew up among adults moulded by the post-war austerity years - in freezing houses where ice formed on the inside of windows and face creams froze in the bathroom. “Turn out the lights” was a constant refrain.

I vowed then that when I grew up and had my own home, lights would burn all over the house and my family would never shiver around a sole source of meagre heating, pulling on another jumper.

And I would be wasteful! Chuck left overs in the bin rather than think about the starving millions and throw out perfectly usable clothes; replace rather than mend, buy pre-washed salads and eat strawberries in winter. (This, of course, was the Dallas era)

Now here I am, head of my own household, drifting about turning lights on and the heating up, having deep hot baths instead of showers and jumping in the car because: if God meant us to walk, why did He invent the wheel?

And instead of nagging parents, suddenly there’s a generation of eco-warriors snapping at our heels, checking food miles and tutting because you didn’t put your used Kleenex in the recycling box.

Yes, I am blessed with children intent on saving the planet. I plug my mobile in to charge only to discover - when I need to make a call - that some laudably conscientious child had unplugged the charger. Slump into a chair and reach for the remote only to find that the television has been switched off at source.

Meanwhile my husband sneaks about replacing light bulbs with those awful low energy tubes which take half an hour to warm up and give less light than a dead glowworm.

I don’t care how many times people assure me that they are now much better than the early prototypes and you can barely tell the difference. You can. They’re as cheery as a naked light bulb in an interrogation chamber.

Cheap flights, year round fruit and veg., handy aerosols, 4x4s were all invented to make life more fun but then up pops a scientist warning us that these are the Devil’s toys.

Luckily for the planet, however, we’re now facing a capitalist meltdown that has billionaires panicking, the ghost of Karl Marx tittering over Highgate cemetery and the rest of us counting out the centimes.

One way or another, life is determined to keep us wringing out our used tea bags. Actually, the New Frugality may not be 100% good news for the planet. Replacing the old banger with a green model or sticking solar panels and windmills all over the roof are luxury investments that may now have to be struck off priority spending lists.

But, certainly, we will all be looking for ways to cut down on waste and spending.

Who dares turn on their oil central heating this winter? Who is not now factoring in petrol costs to the children’s activities and heading to Lidl and Aldi for the unglamorous basics like loo roll, and floor cleaner?

Over the coming months, the Rendezvous will be greeting the challenge of the New Frugality and looking at ways to trim the household budget - without, of course, sinking entirely into gloom and despair.

Now, I’d better go and turn on a low-energy tube before the children get home.

Many thanks to all those who completed our readers’ questionnaire at Faire Play and congratulations to Gail Redhead who won lunch for two at the ever popular Le Robbery in Vire (now under new management - bookings 02 31 67 28 43).

Your answers tell us how popular the Noticeboard and, especially, Marketplace sections are; that many readers are living on their own and that you want more recipes, history and advice as well as articles on animals and horses, walks, boating and cheap living.

We are always pleased to get reader feedback and do our best to cater to all requests. Look out for our columns on bargain-hunting and being a small-holder in our even better Rendezvous in the New Year.

Also in the New Year, we will be phasing in a small charge for the Rendezvous. Our costs are rising, just as they are for the businesses who wish to advertise with us, and thanks to whom the magazine has been free for the past two and a half years. Introducing a charge will allow us to cut our advertising rates whilst continuing to improve the magazine, and to increase our print run to satisfy rising demand for the Rendezvous.

This will mean some adjustment to our distribution points but as it will also allow us to be present in local newsagents, this will make collecting your monthly copy more convenient for many readers. See our December issue for a list of where to find your magazine from January 2009.

Unlike a broken heart money problems can be overcome

October Blog

By moving to France we have, to some extent, distanced ourselves from excessive consumerism and crazy credit as well as from the panic engulfing the US and UK as financial institutions topple like dominos.

This doesn’t make us immune, however, to financial insecurity. Food and fuel prices have rocketed here too and those of us with oil heating are dreading turning it on for winter. The euro value of sterling pensions or savings has been slashed, jobs are hard to come by and those trying to run their own business in France often live on a financial knife edge.

When debts start mounting while income dwindles, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel appears just too far away and the future demands more energy than we believe we can muster.

Few of us can have failed to be shocked by the events at Osbaston House at the start of this school year.

Millionaire Christopher Foster shot dead his horses, dogs and even the chickens. He murdered his much-loved daughter, his wife and then, having barricaded the property, set it alight before returning to his wife’s side to shoot himself.

Time was running out; bailiffs were due the following day as Foster’s £2 million worth of debts were about to catch up with him.

So Foster displayed all the cowardice of the man who cannot face failure. And he showed love - albeit deranged and misguided - for his family (and pets) , by taking them with him rather than leave them to face the consequences without him. (Although his mother is still alive, and grieving.) While the Black Dog is with us, ending it all holds a fleeting attraction. If you love your family too much to leave it mother- (or father-) less, taking loved ones with you has a perverse logic.

But Foster was wrong. When a person kills themself over an irreparable (so they believe) broken heart or following a terrible tragedy or because they are terminally ill and in pain, the death is tragic, of course, especially for those left behind, but at least it is not banal.

But when a man (or woman, although women are less likely to kill themselves over money troubles) commits suicide over his debts (or a teenager over poor exam results) there is none of the poetry of a broken heart or tragic life; it is just plain pointless.

Unlike a broken heart or terminal illness, money problems (and bad results) can be overcome; they are not worth the ultimate sacrifice.

So what? you may be thinking. Millionaire tops himself because he can’t maintain his “must have” lifestyle. His daughter may have had to give up her horses and enter the local comp.
But are not all of us aboard the same consumer merry-go-round, just on a smaller scale?

We are likely to see much more money-related despair in coming months as house repossessions and job losses kick in; the ability to cope with “failure” will serve as an increasingly valuable life skill.

Like most of those who kill themselves over money problems, Foster had kept his debts secret from his friends and family.

According to UK debt counselling agencies - and they only see people whose debts are already pretty bad - one third of their files are marked “partner unaware”. It is bizarre that couples who may happily discuss how to raise their children or celebrate Christmas do not, or cannot, talk about their spending.

OK, we’ve all hidden a bag of new shoes from a partner and then pretended we’ve had them for ages. But seriously, it is secret money problems - like secret drinking, secret pornography, secret gambling - which destroy relationships, marriages, families - and lives.

Had he come clean, Foster would probably, have discovered that he had a practical wife who would have told him “we can get through this. Here’s what we do.” And a daughter who may have cried when her ponies had to be sold, but who would have grown up into a strong young woman able to tell the story of “When my Dad lost everything… and we survived.”

What matters is that you have health and you have loved ones - if you have these two you are already pretty damn well off. Foster’s tragedy was not his debts but that he had travelled too far along the path of despair, alone, to see sense.

Drink of hemlock, if you must, when your heart or body are broken. Not over a pile of IOUs.

Regular blog readers will remember how we took in, out of the kindness of our hearts, an English Setter who had been abandoned when his owner returned to the UK leaving the dog chained to the empty property.

And how does he repay us? Step forward eight adorable little pups, just born to the resident Golden Retriever.

They will be looking for loving homes soon. But, before you take on a(nother) dog, be sure you really want it - for life. Animal rescue workers report an increasing number of dogs being abandoned - literally left wandering empty houses or the streets in some cases - by Brits moving back to the UK. Before you offer to rehouse one of these dogs, or offer a home to a cute little puppy, read our new animal care and behaviour expert Jon Moir’s advice on page 18 of this issue.

Don’t test your brain age with half a bottle of wine inside

Two solid months in the company of my darling teenagers and I have learnt new ways to waste my life. (It was my son, regular readers will remember, who got me hooked on the Game Cube). This summer’s technology briefing began when my daughter asked “have you heard of David Bowie?” Heard of him? David Bowie?
Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane were my youth. Prettiest Star was “our ( first boyfriend) song”. Rebel Rebel, Jean Genie... Space Oddity. Fashion... Changes.

“Ok, calm down, mum. Show us.” Which is how I was introduced to the addictive, time wasting sport of summoning up clips on You Tube. We exhausted the Bowie concerts. Waded through the entire repertoire of Talking Heads - children now rolling their eyes and yawning.

Then I found the Stones in Berlin (Urban Jungle tour - still have the t-shirt)
“Look - maybe you’ll spot me in the audience! As the offspring fled in horror, I whiled away the rest of the week watching my youth flash by in a series of video clips.

To distract me (and get their hands back on the computer) they made me test my brain age on the Nintendo DS. (a software originally designed to help oldies exercise their grey matter but now a big hit with the Gameboy generation.) Triumph! Despite the machine insisting it could not understand my perfectly good BBC English, and despite being too slow on the buttons, I came out years below my real age. (This is good. ) You are meant to re-test yourself daily so you get better and your brain age goes down until it reaches the “optimum” 20 years old.

Here’s a tip for adults: on no account allow your children to test your brain age late in the evening and with half a bottle of wine inside you. It soars to 80+ and provides them with endless mirth. (It’s already bad enough that you have to put your reading glasses on to see the screen.)

You Tube and DS brain tests are self-inflicted distractions, however. The endless pings of emails, junk mails, burblings of the Skype phone, flashing lights to indicate texts, beeps to let you know you have voicemail , the pop-ups on websites are a daily assault of distractions which make it virtually impossible to concentrate on work - or leisure.

Soon after arriving in Fleet Street I was handed one of the very first “portable” phones - about the size of a small bag of shopping. After the thrill of calling everyone I knew just to tell them I was ringing from the car! I immediately recognised the newfangled mobile as a Bad Thing. No more going blissfully AWOL on a story - the editor could track you down anywhere, any time.

Now everyone thinks they can track anyone down, any time and nobody can wait five minutes for a reply. Have you noticed how many people call your home number, leave a message saying they are now going to try your mobile. They leave a message on the mobile telling you they have just left a message on your landline. Then they send a text alerting you to the messages already left, try Skyping and then immediately send an email saying they are increasingly concerned that they can’t get hold of you and are you OK? Can you get back to them urgently, please.

That’s at least half a dozen communications and they’ll start the whole round of calls all over again in half an hour’s time.

It takes an enormous effort of will to ignore all this and concentrate on writing an article or reading a book or talking to your family. Indeed, alarmist research from America says we are now so overwhelmed by distractions that we may soon lose altogether the ability for deep concentration.

If you can’t ignore the rings and beeps the only other option is to hide, out of earshot, at the bottom of the orchard or swim out to sea.

But you’ll pay for it. If just a handful of people have been trying to get hold of you in the meantime, that’ll be 120 messages, minimum, to wade through when you get back - and before you can double check your brain age, run a You Tube clip and wind down with a quick blast on the Game Cube.

No wonder the only time I get to read a book is when the rest of the world is asleep.

August Editor's blog

"it is nobody’s business
who I am or
what I am doing"

In the newspaper world, August is known as the silly season. The general shutdown means there is so little news around that editors end up running bits of nonsense - singing dogs, alien landings etc - to fill their pages.

No need to go scouting for nonsense this August, however, with these real stories making the UK headlines: local councils spending tax payers money on sending officers out “disguised” as dog walkers and with hidden cameras to catch real walkers failing to clear up their dogs’ mess. Council teams tailing families for weeks to check they really live in the school catchment area they claim.

Just think of the employment opportunities if we continue down this route! What with all the cctv footage to be monitored as well, that’s half the country with a job for life spying on the other half. From nation of shopkeepers to nation of snoopers.

But of course these aren’t just silly season stories, they leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Think of Zimbabwe where neighbours are encouraged to monitor each other’s voting habits. Think of the Soviet Union where the most feted role model for schoolchildren was the little boy who shopped his parents and got them executed for anti-soviet sentiments.

The rise in official snooping comes as we learn that the government is considering allowing the police unquestioned access to telephone information (at present, their requests for such information can be challenged) and talk about putting cameras in the back of every airline seat to check if passengers are behaving suspiciously.

Then there’s the forty two day detention issue, of course, which prompted Conservative MP David Davis to resign his seat and stand for re-election.

Just as a country at war has a great excuse for clamping down on dissent at home, there’s nothing like a good terrorist threat - and what better than putative Islamic bombers - as a tool to curtail individual freedoms.

David Davis, opposing the introduction of 42 day detention, was reelected although I suspect that was because he is Tory in a very Tory area rather than because too may people give a toss about Muslims being thrown into jail.

The ensuing debate, however, prompted one joyous moment for Britain when the former head of the Security Service MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Lords that she opposed 42 day detention on the grounds that there is no such thing as complete security and that lengthy detention without trial flies in the face of hard won British civil liberties.

It is heartening indeed that the woman once charged with domestic surveillance and who had the power to order phone taps and letter opening and teams of followers, holds individual freedom dear.

And she is quite right. You cannot have 100% security any more than you can guarantee the safety of your children. Unless, of course, you lock them in their bedrooms for life and never let them walk into town or climb a tree - in which case what kind of sick children would they be? Similarly, how sick is a society where everybody is spied on? Orwell tried to tell us.

Of course, even the freest democracies need some degree of internal surveillance. And, of course, as a mother, I sympathise with parents terrified of the increasing prevalence of knife crime who want cctv cameras on every street corner. But this is a symptom of a sick society not a solution.

Excessive monitoring is a tool of state control. Forcing citizens to carry identity papers is the state’s way of asserting ownership of the individual. Overwhelming citizens with red tape and bureaucracy is another way of making the same point.

In these respects France, despite her reputation for being quick to the barricades, is far less free than Britain.

To ensure that not one child slips unfairly into a better school nor one potential criminal ever remains at liberty you would have to monitor all of the people all of the time. It means challenging the innocent to identify and explain themselves.

The argument used, not only by the organs of state intent on attacking civil liberties, but, too often, by those whose liberties are under attack, is: if you’ve nothing to hide and are doing nothing wrong, why would you mind carrying an ID card or being watched?

But if I have nothing to hide and am doing nothing wrong, it is nobody’s business who I am or what I am doing.

July Editor's blog

"Losing our identities:
the Nobody Scenario"

There is a computer game which, so the blurb goes, has been specially designed to tax the older brain and keep it perky. I don’t need this software - I get more than enough mental stimulation trying to make head and tail of my daughter’s text messages. Take this one, from last month’s school trip to Italy: Ostia zin.

She had already explained to me that’s it all phonetic. So - Ostia is...thin? Is the ancient Roman port spectacularly narrow? Maybe she meant Ostia, seen - as in: done that, got the t-shirt ? But still my mind kept straying back to that picture of a very narrow set of ancient ruins.

“Amazin” she sighed when she got back.

God save these poor teenagers - their parents are so dim.

But far from, as BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys would have it, “doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago” texting, according to a new report, is good for children. It improves literacy.

Frequent texting develops their reading and writing because of the imaginative abbreviations needed, according to the latest academic research. These help vocabulary and phonological awareness.

Hmmm. I can hear it now: but mum, you know texting is good for me…

As we gear up for that annual screen fest which is the summer holidays (especially, God forbid, if the weather is anything like last year) parents throughout the developed world are plotting strategies to lure their offspring away from the virtual world and into the real one.

Bang on cue, the maverick British scientist Susan Greenfield has come to some really scary conclusions. A specialist in brain degeneration and the loss of identity associated with Alzheimer’s, Greenfield says that today’s teens are heading not just for an identity crisis but are in danger of losing their identity altogether. She calls it the Nobody Scenario.

And she goes further: the actual make-up of the brain changing in response to the hours spent in the unreal world.

When you, say, rescue the princess from the tower during a computer game you don’t know - as you would if you were reading the story - anything about the princess, her personality, why she is in the tower, why it is your job to rescue her? There is no narrative and we human beings need narrative both to make sense of who we are and to understand the world around us.
Add spoon-fed menu options which avoid the need for free ranging enquiry, tick box multiple choice options, the death of imagination and creativity, a text language which avoids the need for the verbs and the conditional structures essential to complex thought process and you create a generation of screen addicts unable to link facts together and understand how they are related to each other.

To create our unique identities we need unique adventures, conversations and interactions with the real world around us. But individuality is being obliterated in favour of a passive state, reacting to a flood of incoming sensations - a “yuck” and “wow” mentality where the ability to make connections is entirely lost.

A generation which won’t be able to build the mental framework necessary to link actions to consequences - a moral compass in other words.

The Nobody Scenario is particularly scary because nobodies want to become somebodies and those without a sense of personal identity are more likely to opt for a collective identity: within a gang, for example, or political or religious extremist group. Fundamentalism is, after all, the suppression of uniqueness.

Greenfield’s hypothesis gets worse. The constant “hits” of wham bam computer games promote the addictive over-release of the brain’s natural feel good chemical, dopamine. The brain is a supremely malleable organ and excessive dopamine hits could, she believes, be leading to an underfunctioning of the prefrontal cortex - i.e. an inability to make connections typified by a total absorption in the here and now and an inability to consider past and future actions. It could lead, in other words, to a generation literally unable to understand the meaning of their actions.

She is talking about children who spend between six to nine hours a day in front of one screen or other - apparently not uncommon. Of course none of our children fall into this category. Do they?

Go on: count the hours.

One of my concerns about particularly, hand held computer games, has always been the effect on the eyesight of scowling at tiny screens for hours. But I’ve just unpacked a box of my childhood books, saved for my own children’s long summer holidays, and had to go in search of a magnifying glass. The writing is miniscule - far smaller than your average text message . Ditto all those old Penguins, price 1/- , inherited from my mother. No wonder we didn’t have any holes in the ozone layer in those days - one tree must have been enough for an entire print run. It’s a wonder that those of us who spent eight summer weeks with our nose in a book, not to mention all those hours with a torch under the bedclothes, have any eyesight left.