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My friends say I’m mean. But this just isn’t true. There is a specific reason for my attitude to money and it is very straightforward, though not necessarily moral. I don’t like spending £50 on a starter because £50 would buy a full set of horse shoes. I don’t like spending £100 on a new jacket because £100 would buy a lightweight summer turn-out rug.
Quite why horses have always qualified in my mind for entirely grudge-free cheque writing I have never fully understood. But the strange fact is I would gladly surrender the entire contents of my bank account every month to the cause of maintaining equines in livery. The rest of life’s expenses, from meals out to clothes and face creams, are a shocking extravagance which leave me reeling with stomach-churning guilt.
No doubt I shall hit 70 and be a complete sight, having not spent a penny on myself in 50 years. Whereas my horses will be as shiny and healthy and wrinkle free as the day I bought them.
The problem is making other people, especially my long-suffering nearest and dearest, understand my affliction. For example, my boyfriend very wonderfully insisted on buying me a pair of beautiful designer stilettos recently. Rather than celebrating when I found out that they cost £300, I had nightmares about what could be purchased in Roker’s horse supply shop for this amount. In one particular vision I had my arms full of new rugs, bridles, and myriad other heavenly-smelling leather horsey items, which began to shrink in my hands until they became a tiny pair of snakeskin sling-backs, at which point I woke in a sweat.
I love the shoes, but the challenge now is actually to wear them while keeping at bay visions of what my inner horse obsessive thinks they represent.
This will not be easy. The £170 Ugg boots which have appeared in this column before still fester in my understairs cupboard. I cannot wear them because the horrible luxurious feel of them reminds me of the fancy leather headcollars my horses might have now if they had never existed.
One day soon I intend to write a book about all the expensive personal items I have ever purchased which have caused me nothing but confusion. In this anti-capitalist tract, very much a book of its time I feel, I will set out in chilling detail how I once obtained a pinstriped linen suit for £400 and every time I wore it disaster struck. I will explain my belief that this is because £400 is exactly the amount of one month’s stable livery. As I say, it’s very straightforward.
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