Much flak about the Public Service Investment Society (as its name suggests a public servants’ investment co-op) went into receivership last Friday. Luckily I withdrew all my savings and borrowed $300 only last week, so I don’t stand to lose much! I always have been altruistic like that!
I’ve just had some photos done for the modelling I’m venturing on, I’m hoping to make lots of lovely lolly (I probably won’t but hope springs eternal and all that!) Anyway posing lying on a bean bag with a magazine and a large whisky all morning is a change from housework!!
And we are right behind you here it seems with our devaluation last weekend. They do a lot of talk about how it will help the farmers and how the increased price of imports won’t work through to the public for 18 months – but yesterday the news was that car dealers have never been busier and all the prices will be going up within a month or so! And I expect that’s how it will be all round. The country has been borrowing vast sums abroad for the last two years, and some time soon we shall have to stop doing that and cut imports accordingly – and then there’s going to be a big mess, with a lot of unemployment, I fear.
And why do you have to go on to temp work if you are given an Easter holiday? It all sounds mysterious and foreboding – especially taken with odd snippets that we get over the radio about your cost of living such as the new price of the Times – and now your rather horrifying budget. Is it becoming very difficult to exist and enjoy life in a small way in London?
X starts his new job here on Monday week and swears that when the house sells he is going up to do the packing and moving. But of all the crazy times to change jobs and house and then arrange to spend a month’s rent on a party as he is going to tomorrow night – it’s a pity I haven’t been rendered quite as speechless as you might expect because he’s a bit fed up with my comments on the situation, I fear! The job is better paid than the last – but he will need it all by the time he’s mortgaged himself to the hilt to buy a house in the bits of the city he considers suitable for a young business executive!
The warnings about everything being so expensive in Japan were quite true – a cup of coffee and doughnut in a milk bar type of place were equivalent to 72p and 25p – both very good admittedly. [Those were the days…]
Yes, the man who bought the Fiat seemed sweet – if rather lean and hungry looking. He told X how he’d started with a v. dashing car – and as he married and acquired more and more family the cars got smaller and older and now he was down to 3 children and a Fiat!
We got a solitary – I mean one-man-on-his-own builder up here yesterday to look at the plans and the house itself, and he promised us an estimate for labour only, maybe tomorrow. He said the best way was for us to ‘shop around’ and buy the materials ourselves – apparently it’s worth driving 20 miles for timber even paying for delivery compared to the local timber-yard. He also said that one could get up to 30% off normal price for cash on delivery – which reflects how badly off the building industry is at present – because no one can get a mortgage anywhere to build with: though he must surely be exaggerating. I hope his figure looks reasonable as he seemed a pleasant straightforward man, though I suspect his suggestion was mainly because he hasn’t any working capital himself!
Filed words 