Monday 16th July
I had a boss once, who was almost part of the ‘Aristocracy’; in fact his mother had been a lady in waiting to the Queen Mother at one time. God only knows how these things are decided, if at all nowadays, but his family were certainly somebodies. They were from Scotland, but ‘Mac’, as he was known to all was more English than ‘tuppence’, private schooling had done its worst, and he was a real posh boy. Despite this he was very down to earth and loved dirty jokes and had a wicked sense of humour. Whether working in Catering was his very own form of rebelling I don’t know, but he always assured me that he didn’t have to work at all, that he had plenty of money invested and could live ‘orf the interest’(that was in the days when interest was worth having, of course). One of his mantras was that one must never spend one’s Capital, and even Income should be spared if any of it could be added to the Capital. I was just a working class oik, and had no idea what Capital meant. You got your wages on a Friday, and would be lucky to have any left by Thursday. I did have a small amount in savings, but this was in case I lost my job, not in any way as Capital. But then came the house-buying boom of the seventies, and desperate not to be left behind, despite living in a nice controlled-rent flat, I bought my first property. So at last I had some Capital, or a Mortgage in place of it. Those of us who lived through the eighties and nineties were so so lucky. House prices kept going up in leaps and bounds, and it was almost ‘de rigeur’ to boast of how much more ones house was worth today than when one bought it. And one consequence was that as your Mortgage slowed diminished and the value of your house increased, you had a larger and larger lump of equity. But it was sitting useless in your property, you couldn’t actually spend it. Many friends and colleagues at the time were busily re-mortgaging their houses, sometimes annually, and so releasing this Capital, and spending it. Some were clever and used it to buy other properties, but most bought cars or holidays or a new kitchen. I, on the other hand took the advice of Mac, and tried to pay my mortgage off even quicker, which I did. I then sold the house and got a large sum of money, which I have now mostly spent on two properties, one here and one in France. But in a way it doesn’t really matter, as long as you still have an income. You will die and others will inherit your Capital and probably spend it foolishly anyway. Funny old game though.