Sunday 7th May

There never seems a time when there isn’t something.  Some niggling little (or large) problem, hovering (or looming) on the horizon.  And as soon as that is dealt with an e-mail arrives, or something in the post, or a phone call – and there is something else to deal with.  And we have to keep track of so many things, so many balls to be constantly juggling.  I can remember life in the Sixties, or when I first came to London.  I was paid in cash, in a nice little brown envelope with a payslip that was literally a long slip of paper – not that my wages varied that much.  And this was weekly, so you only had to make sure you had enough money to last until Thursday.  There was rent to pay, again in cash and paid on a Friday night.  A handful of shillings for the electricity meter and the rest of the money was yours.  Maybe you bought a weekly tube ticket on a Monday morning but sometimes you paid every day.  I used to get about £15 net a week.  My rent was £6.  That left £9.00.  You could take your girl to the pictures and to the Wimpy bar after and still have change out of a ten bob note.  So even after maybe buying clothes or some other essential you had roughly a pound a day for food and travel.  Fish and chips were only a few shillings – life was sweet.  Even my parents had council rent and electricity and a couple of insurances, again collected weekly to pay.  No rates, no water rates, no phone bill, no car bills, no mobile phone bill, no monthly direct debit for electricity and gas, no sky monthly bill either or any of those other items which constantly trip you up, and make budget calculations so hard.

And now everything is on-line.  But what a nightmare that is.  Tax is on line, booking flights on line, buying supplies for the café on line, renewing almost anything is now on line, your electricity bill is on line.  And all of that means you have to check your e-mails daily just to make sure you haven’t missed something.  And then there is always something.  Social media just as bad.  Birthdays cannot be missed now, unless of course you forget to log in to Facebook.  Too many tweets to read, too many Facebook posts to like…there is always something.  I suppose it may be possibly to simply switch everything off, the television, the internet, don’t open your letter-box.  But then sure as oeufs are oeufs there will be something you will miss.