27 January - Debts & Rebates

I read many articles on how to be happy, what's the most value in life etc, just because papers and magazines are always awash with them. Don't worry, I also read about the damage done by Vedanta bauxite plant in the state of Orissa/India and about cancer research.
They all seem to always suggest that it's good family ties which makes the happiest and that money doesn't buy happiness and that it may all depend on our personal chemical make up and how we cope with it all. I'm inclined to think this is only partly true as for most things that are stated. I may be super odd but I don't care for family one bit. Sure I care for my lover at the time but I don't much care for his family or mine. I care out of duty, conditioning. If they didn't exist I'd be fine (though clearly don't wish their non existance to happen as a sudden wipe out of all of them but more in the 'If they had never existed' sort of way. Since one has to bear them in mind all the time before doing this or that, like running away to join the circus.

As for the money, again, maybe it doesn't make you happier. They say that there's a huge difference between having nothing/not enough and say, 25k a year, but there isn't much above that or 25k to 40k. Things may be very different if you have 1m a year to spend (rather than just be allocated to expenditure needed to fund a proportionally higher version of the lifestyle that you have on 40k).

So tell me why the only news that lately have made me punch the air, put phone down and do a little jig have been news of cash bonanzas. The first one was before xmas, when I friend from whom I had borrowed 5k last year said she didn't want it back (I was informing her I should be able to pay her back by April this year) and morevoer she didn't care what I then would do with it. I was speechless. The fact that she's comparatively massively richer than I am is not the point. This was just a lovely gesture. Of course I will donate some of it to charity. Tithing is a concept I have always liked. I didn't punch the air at that news because it didn't seem right to rejoice (my friend had lost her father a month earlier and she's still very upset).

The other news is altogether different. As part of a transaction I made last January, 4k was being held in escrow at my solicitors. My tenacity in trying to get this amount released back to me as opposed to being paid on to someone who has never remembered to claim it, has paid off. Solicitor said he saw no reason not to pay it back to me and, check this out all ye who hate the legal professionals, he claims not to want any fee from me - I had always said we could do it american style, split what he managed not to pay on. I will donate his estimated fee to charity as above. But I did explode in pure glee. Granted, I then checked myself as cash not in my account yet but let's be hopeful.

So there you go. No love action, no gifts, no sunny beaches in Thailand have elicited this kind of JOY. Only money has done it. Money that's earmarked to pay off other things (apart from buying super excellent dinner at the Ledbury for Toph asap since he dreams of the pheasant dish there) but essentially a bonus. Am beginning to understand those bankers who want to or have moved to Switzerland to safeguard their cash against tax man. If, as they say, they work in banking because it's the pursuit of money that gets them out of bed in the morning and beyond, then money has this effect on them every day. In other words they must be high all the time.

19 February - Kidneys & Other spares

A friend writes she's having to have gallstones out which is a relief as she'd previously thought she had stomach cancer it was major stabbing pain. I didn't realise you can be any age and have the bastards. Good luck to her.
It sets me thinking about health. Well, I do a lot of that already. But this is one that puzzles me. Kidneys are hard to come by, and it's illegal to buy or sell them in most coutries for obvious reasons as in some countries you don't have to be willing to give one up for some crim to take it off you. But, in all countries there's a major scarcity.

Now, wouldn't it be a great idea if in a recession such as now with people losing jobs left right and centre, the government was to put a price on one, say £50k and encourage all to come forward. Hey presto, the entire waiting list for this organ would disappear and the people about to lose a house to the banks, would be able to front the mortgage. Clearly one should not be allowed to sell family member's kidneys, you'd have to be 21 years old and have it all explained properly before you sign a consent but think about it?

Mine is going... if anybody wants one, and is a match, get in touch. The liver I'd say is 100k. Non smoker, non drinker, really a bargain.

But seriously, I do believe in organ donor after death fore example but am told that in many cases despite a person having expressed the wish and carrying the card, the family can still oppose and stop this? Unbelievable.

19 Jan - Cash Money

No sooner have I sorted out a loan wiht Abbey - took 6 weeks and I won't catalogue all the mistakes that were made by... them, that the one at RBS may now not be so safe. The idiots at my solicitor had requested the RBS funds a whole few weeks before completion so suddenly I was paying a first mortgage installment BEFORE I actually get keys to new home, so I said er... give the money back to RBS and give me back the amount you took out prematurely, and only get it out when I actually have to hand it over to seller right? Right.

But maybe my solicitor knew something I didn't and I hope that having handed the money back to the biggest stupidest bank in these times of cretin chairmen and so on doesn't mean I have rejected their mortgage, 'cause I bloody well wouldn't get one now...

I'm seriously thinking of moving to Nigeria, at least there I would expect all sorts of crazy stuff going on with banks and not the incompetence that here subsitutes scams. Just to be clear about how stupendously incompetent they are, my loan with Abbey was approved in a name and surname that was not simply a misspelling of mine but a completely different entity, a Dr. Burnett in fact. Who he?