Money Makes The World Go Round
I haven't written for a while. There have been too many other competing interests for my energies of late.
A rather substantial portion has been devoted to work. I am not one to rally under the flag of medicine-as-a-vocation. Nor would I wish to sarifice my own life on alter of altruism. Nonetheless, I do take pride in doing a good job by the people I look after. As a system the NHS is inherently inefficient and I find that, in order to get a recent result out, you have to put a disproportionate amount of energy in. At times this can be truely exhausting.
Still, whatever its failings, the NHS cannot be said to be as inefficient as my boiler. It is effectively nothing more than one big, unclad kettle, sitting in a cupboard at the back of the flat. When it's on, it is scarcely possible to open the cupboard door without risking third-degree burns from the incredible heat that radiates from its thin metal body. I have come to suspect that this beast-in-the-backroom has single-handedly run up most of the energy for which London Electric are currently demanding blood money to the tune of a ludicrous £900.
In addition, several other companies and organisations' claims on my money have become so persistent (and menacing) as of late that I have been forced to remove my head from the sand and review the situation. The situation, alas, is bleak. £1000 council tax unpaid. £400 of arrears in my student loans. Tiresome, irksome affairs of which various voices on the other end of the phone speak to me in comically serious tones. They seem to find it beyound belief that I have no records of account numbers or am unable to give precise details for a direct debit on my account; personally, I find it beyond belief that anybody could to be bothered to waste time memorising such banal trivia. My dealings have led to the conclusion that I'm not one for the crass business of finance. I earn it and I spend it - that is the limit of my interest in money.
Thankfully, I can escape all these mundane concerns in the clubs of London. So long as I have the money in my pocket to buy the next round, who care's about bills and deadly serious debt collectors. Let them wait - I'll pay...eventually.
A rather substantial portion has been devoted to work. I am not one to rally under the flag of medicine-as-a-vocation. Nor would I wish to sarifice my own life on alter of altruism. Nonetheless, I do take pride in doing a good job by the people I look after. As a system the NHS is inherently inefficient and I find that, in order to get a recent result out, you have to put a disproportionate amount of energy in. At times this can be truely exhausting.
Still, whatever its failings, the NHS cannot be said to be as inefficient as my boiler. It is effectively nothing more than one big, unclad kettle, sitting in a cupboard at the back of the flat. When it's on, it is scarcely possible to open the cupboard door without risking third-degree burns from the incredible heat that radiates from its thin metal body. I have come to suspect that this beast-in-the-backroom has single-handedly run up most of the energy for which London Electric are currently demanding blood money to the tune of a ludicrous £900.
In addition, several other companies and organisations' claims on my money have become so persistent (and menacing) as of late that I have been forced to remove my head from the sand and review the situation. The situation, alas, is bleak. £1000 council tax unpaid. £400 of arrears in my student loans. Tiresome, irksome affairs of which various voices on the other end of the phone speak to me in comically serious tones. They seem to find it beyound belief that I have no records of account numbers or am unable to give precise details for a direct debit on my account; personally, I find it beyond belief that anybody could to be bothered to waste time memorising such banal trivia. My dealings have led to the conclusion that I'm not one for the crass business of finance. I earn it and I spend it - that is the limit of my interest in money.
Thankfully, I can escape all these mundane concerns in the clubs of London. So long as I have the money in my pocket to buy the next round, who care's about bills and deadly serious debt collectors. Let them wait - I'll pay...eventually.
posted by The Venial Sinner at 7:25 pm
3 Comments:
Good attitude. Continue as planned. One day you will probably get old and buy a flat or a house, and will have a debt of two hundred thousand pounds or more. So a few hundred (or indeed thousand) quid here or there will make absolutely no difference to you. Spend it, enjoy it. Othwerwise your job will eat you alive. Only when you realise that filling in all that bullshit paperwork and "chasing" all those requests actually pays for iPods, laptops, holidays, beers, etc can you cope with the NHS.
I think you need a money manager as you were told by little brother before you get totally out of depth.
Well, I thought you were the embodyment of Lord Byron, but now I see you're much more Victorian than that!
Someone from Dickens, I think, but I can't work out who...
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