Late blogging today, late night last night (60th birthday party), bed half past midnight, sleep about 1 till 3:30, awake till 5:30/6ish, knew it would be like that so didn’t set the alarm, woke about 8:30.
Spent a lot of time when I was awake thinking about my monetary thoughts from yesterday.
It’s depressing to think that the parish councils, with all the stress and crap they give me, earn me less than four grand a year. The school governors are not so stressful, but for the two of them I get £1400 all together. Then there’s the magazine, which is dying on its legs as the organisation tries to cut corners – for very good reasons, because it’s in a financial mess.
I worked out my savings, which come to about £15k altogether, in Nationwide and Triodos (an ethical bank) so hopefully they should be safe, or at least covered by the government’s guarantee. And I’ve got some shares in Granada (from when I worked there) and some in Barclays (at several removes from one of the building society conversions) and an ethical maxi Isa which started as £2k and I think might have just about got back up to that from falling in the last shock, god knows what it’s worth now, but quite honestly I don’t even count any of those. I could live for a year or so on the fifteen grand I guess (I think I heard somewhere recently that a single person needs about £13k for a tolerable standard of living), but given that I have no pension, I would be reluctant to do anything like that.
I wondered if I would qualify for some kind of benefit, income support or whatever, if I were on my own. But if we were only separated, I suspect Hubby’s income would still count against me, and my savings, such as they are, would too.
I thought about trying to find a sugar daddy, but if it comes to that I might as well stick with the one I’ve got. So, in the dark hours of the early morning the solution appeared to me: Option 5, stay where I am and try to make the most of it. Take advantage of the fact that I have a roof over my head and my bills paid for me, that he doesn’t stand in my way if I get the chance to go to Paris or Brussels or Hungary or Berlin. Carry on living life the way I have for the last few years, try to be grateful, try to count my blessings, try to make the most of things, find small reasons to be cheerful. Looks like it’s that or Option 2, the one that Usky warned me to avoid at all costs, to take any old crappy job that I would probably hate.
I have a friend, younger than me, early forties, also with a PhD but never married, no kids, who lives hand to mouth, going from one crappy temping job to the next. That is what I can see my life being like if I go.
So, here I am again, all my dreams crumbled to dust – sorry, I’m even slipping into cliché now, unforgivable. If I have to stay, maybe I should follow Trevor’s advice and attempt (again) some kind of reconciliation, try to talk to him, try to revive some of the affection. Yet again.