I’m skint. Bust. Stony- broke. Without adequate funds. Rollin’ without the chedda. I can hear you reaching for your wallets, ready to donate your own cash to alleviate my plight, but you needn’t worry. I have a place to live rent free, and most of my meals supplied, and there’s a big stack of books in the bookcase. To those of you to whom this sounds a bit familiar, you’ve got it in one: I’ve gone to live with the parentals.
After a good few years living as my own man, moving back in with the folks can be a bit of a shock; I already knew it wasn’t really acceptable to drink the milk straight out of the carton while listening to thrash metal and watching porn in the living room, but darn it all if I hadn’t gotten used to it. Of course living in a house with responsible people has some wonderful, nearly forgotten advantages: it sure is easy to read with light-bulbs in all the fittings, and I can walk around barefoot without contracting any interesting infections from the carpets.
Unfortunately, hanging around reading Wilkie Collins books and eating free food is destined to have a negative effect on my trim figure. I’m going to have to venture abroad at some point and to do that, I’ll need petrol for the car. This can be a bit of a bugger because, as I’m sure you are well aware, society seems to rely on money as an exchange mechanism for goods and services. It seems unlikely that my preferred system, in which I am given anything I like in exchange for a wink and a smile, is going to work on the dour gentleman employed at the petrol station at the bottom of the street. So I’m going to have to get some money from somewhere. Let’s have a look at my options:
1.Earn it. This seems to be the accepted method, but also a challenging one. The job market is hardly crying out for literature graduates with moderate to poor computer skills, and so it looks like it’s going to be scut work for me. Alas, the summer is hardly the time to be getting temporary work, as every other returning student in the country tramps the streets looking for dishwashing and labouring opportunities. On the plus side, it gives me the chance to go into a lot of pubs with the stated reason of seeking employment, but assuming I don’t go hired, a conciliatory pint wouldn’t go amiss. Lets say I can get turned down five times by mid afternoon, and I can go home no longer worried about my lack of employment! Although I’d have to get someone to lend me the money for the beer, as pubs tend not to give it out gratis (I have already explored this). Shit.
2.Nick it. For the increasingly desperate, there is always a life of crime. I may have to wait a while before I start targeting family members, lest the link between my recent arrival and sudden poverty prove too obvious. In the meantime I’ll have to liberate funds from someone less close to home. Burglary seems like a lot of effort, and I’m too feeble to mug even the wobbliest of pensioners. That really only leaves armed robbery- now if I can just find a bank with some money left in it.
3.Borrow it. Despite the recent financial crisis, banks seem only too keen to extend the overdraft of stinking student layabouts like myself. The only problem is they eventually come calling for it back- landing me in a situation much like my current one, only with the threat of jail time.
4.Make someone give it to you. This used to be categorised under similar terms to the aforementioned armed robbery, but is now colloquially know as ‘having an accident that wasn’t your fault,’ or even more colloquially as ‘ripping some poor bastard off.’ No gap in the pavement, badly driven forklift or improperly signposted patch of wet floor shall escape my roving eye and clumsy feet. Failing that, who do I know that I can sue?
5.Find it. Obviously the best solution, but one that requires quite a lot of effort. It is unlikely that I’ll walk round a corner and trip over a mountain of platinum, so it’s sofa diving for me.
6.Marry it. I always fancied being a kept man.
If anybody has any other suggestions I would be happy to hear them. Or you can just stick the check in the post.
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