Buyer's Regret

I can't help but wonder what the hell I was thinking when I said I'd write every day...

  

It's quite tricky thinking of some original topic every day.  It's tempting to write in advance and set up an auto-post, like last year's Suite experiment while I was on tour in Sweden, especially for those days (like today) when I won't put this up on Facebook or something (although who cares to read this anyway?), but that takes away the element of deliberate challenge.  However, everything counts in this mad mission, but hopefully I'll be able to produce something interesting...

Today, I'd like to talk about what I do with my money once I get paid.  Not only has it been less than a fortnight since my last Cathedral pay packet, but I was also lucky enough to sing with a visiting choir for money this week as well.  As an added bonus, the choir were actually very good, and even let me lunch for free with them on Sunday.  They paid me a small but useful sum of money, most of which has either been spent already, or is going to be used to get me out of the top of my overdraft again.  Surprisingly, my spending habits haven't changed since I moved away from home almost six years ago.

The number one expenditure I have is food, whether I cook it or not.  I've gotten into quite an expensive lunching habit recently, spending my unpaid hour sampling various restaurants and cafes around Truro.  I sometimes think about writing reviews, but it would take a level of preparation and foresight that I just don't seem to either have or be bothered to use; I busy myself with the eating rather than any kind of judgement.  I suppose in a way it's quite sad going to places on my own, but is it sad?  I'm not really bothered.  I've taken to reading subversive literature in public places, so I have that to keep me company at least.  Last night I went to the new HUBBOX in the old Kenwyn Street Chapel (The One Eyed HUB?) and sampled their delicious Smoked Brisket and a quite powerful hoppy beer, for a remarkably affordable price.  It's an expensive habit, but I enjoy going out to eat.  Less washing up for starters.  I'm happy to shell out for decent stuff when I actually want to cook as well though.

One once major expense that doesn't exist anymore is toys.  Maybe I really am growing up or something, but I prioritise my 'disposable income' for food and more commonly booze rather than anything else.  True, I still haunt eBay looking for any bargains, but I don't often bid on anything.

The other avenue of expenditure in my life that has never changed is books.  I will buy books whenever I'm bored.  I once bought a book because it was edited by an American member of the Bright family.  I even bought a book because I read it was good (but no other detail) and it had a "buy one, get one half price" sticker (a deadly and effective weapon against my bank balance).  I'm gradually purchasing the entire printed works of Chuck Palahniuk, and at least one of his paperbacks accompanies me wherever I go; a hardback copy of Diary sits on my spare pillow for when I retire.  My Amazon wishlist for books (aside from the leftover Palahniuk titles) has a couple of crackers on it even as it stands, with The Portlandia Cookbook: Cook Like a Local for pickle recipes, Q and A a Day: 5-year Journal for even more daily writing, and the collections of Animal Man and Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison.  I discovered Morrison's run of Doom Patrol in the Norwich Millennium Library, and if you like surrealist literature, I suggest you seek it out.

I often don't regret buying things.  Like eating out, or going to the cinema, I try to exhaustively research  potential purchases to make sure I'm not disappointed.  There is one major area that I always seem t ofall down on though, and that's mobile phones.  I have a chequered history as far as phones are concerned, and my current handset, somewhat appropriately named "The Man Without Pity", doesn't work properly.  It hangs, freezes, quits applications whenever it likes... Okay, I'm running the developer preview software so I ought to expect it.  I characterise it as grumpy, and every time I try to replace it, something happens with the new handset that I'm not happy with, be it just from bad function to straight up software conflict.  It's... Cursed.  The whole thing is cursed through and through, and I have subsequently decided not to replace my phone before I actually upgrade...

Of course, I still need to get a significant distance out of my overdraft (Hah!), so I shouldn't be spending.  Sometimes, especially after a night on the tiles, I do feel a tinge of regret creep across my soul in those same boots of lead again... But money can be recovered after all.  I really need to save up for my trips though, not only to London, but ideally to get to Oxford as well, Toronto and the holiday of a lifetime that is Portland, OR...