Thoughtful letter in the post from Lloyds Bank. They’re going to charge me £35 for a returned Direct Debit. This would be for my contact lenses. £30 a month, and I just didn’t have the money this time. So no lenses, and I end up paying more money for nothing.
This is, I believe, how the debt trap works, how the poor are kept from getting out of being poor. “We are charging you for not having any money”.
I shall get on the phone and beg that they waive the fee, as I’ve done in the past. But I fear I’ve used up all my Get Out Of Jail cards with them. And with the world.
BT want an unreasonable amount of money from me too, ho hum. And Haringey Council refuse to pay me the increase in my housing benefit. Something to do with Rent Officer Decisions: the rent was fixed last March and has to stand for the year. So I have to find the extra £6 a week somehow. Or -whisper it – get a job.
I have to laugh at all this, really. I know it’s my fault for never taking money very seriously. But how can I, when banks charge me for being poor? As you know, Dear Reader, I shall maintain to my death that the world owes me a modest living. I’m Dickon Edwards. That’s my job.
My thirty-fifth birthday is on Sept 3rd. Continuing to live like this, depending on the endless kindness of friends and family, with minus money and bouncing payments just like when I was a student, is getting a bit tiresome for all parties, frankly. When considering life ambitions and choices, you’re meant to say “where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”
Well, I see myself as a poor, debt-ridden, frustrated, lonely, unfulfilled, bitter, anxious and unhappy man of 40, owning no property, living in a rented furnished bedsit. And that’s putting it nicely. Best to keep one’s hopes at ground level. That way, one can only be pleasantly surprised. And I live in a state of constant surprise. Dinner is a success!
The other day I was at my kind friends Charley and Kirsten’s place for a party. They’d laid on food and drink in their lovely Crouch End garden, and I was effusively grateful and happy for it all. There was one slightly upsetting point where everyone else discussed mortages and buying flats as a couple, and I have to confess I saw my life stretched out before me – and behind me – and I nearly started to cry. The drink probably had something to do with it. But I had no right to, of course. I’ve made my own narrow, single, haughtily eccentric bed, so I must lie in it. It’s a statement I’ve said before and must say again, daily. And without wishing to sound too Frank Capra about it, I’m rich in kind and funny friends, and will take them over an income any day. The lack of money is a bore, but I refuse to be judged as a ‘loser’ on that level alone. I can only ‘lose’ if I stop being the way I am.
Ah well, I shall just have to sell more of the possessions I never use, and make serious pitches for writing work. Paid writing work. And try to balance the budget a bit better. Which means not going out much.
Till then, I’ll get by, I always do. I’m not shackled to a day job I loathe and can pretty much do whatever I want to do every day, as long as it doesn’t cost money. I’m not in any physical pain, and whatever the news says, I’m unlikely to be shot at or bombed compared to being in the same situation in a less stable land. So I have no right to complain. I’m surrounded by millionaires here in Highgate. There has to be some way of channelling a small amount of that wealth in my direction, without resorting to illegality or trying to do some job I’m incapable of. Answers to the usual address. And no, I won’t do Boy George’s community service for him.
I continue to live as a beggar with a choice, and I’m not giving in now.
