UNTOLD WEALTH

I don’t really know what I would do with untold wealth and riches beyond the dreams of avarice (and believe me, that’s a lot of dreaming), but with all the recent talk of supersized lottery jackpots and suchlike I have started to wonder quite what I might do if I was ever put in that unlikely position. Of course, whenever I start to ponder upon such things, people just say things to me like “Well, I bloody well know what I would do…” and that seems to end the discussion right there, but, well you know what I’m like. If there’s an itch to be scratched you’ll find me there, scratching away at it far after everyone else has gone home and taken all their toys with them.

Of course there are things that I would do. I suspect everyone has the odd daydream of their own carefree and financially secure lifestyle. It would be nice, for example, to travel a little, perhaps at a level of comfort previously unknown to my “economy class” budget, and maybe it would be pleasant to have a house with a flat garden to potter about in and with enough room inside it so that I didn’t have to trip over things every time I wanted to get a biscuit out of the kitchen cupboard. Although with big houses come big responsibilities and the worries attached to that might make that particular blessing turn out to be more of a curse. The headlines are full of the misfortunes happening upon people residing in “millionaire’s mansions” and, even without such things to think about, I’m already intimidated enough by the upkeep of the ramshackle hovel I currently live in.

It would probably be reasonable to consider the possibility driving a slightly newer car, although the expensive sporty types seen on “Top Gear” usually strike me as being terribly impractical, and given a V12 Turbo Carnameendingini, I suspect I would find a tree to crash it into with remarkable speed. Obviously, never having to worry about paying the bills would be a blessing, but, apart from perhaps a better computer, in terms of material stuff, that’s pretty much it. Everything beyond that in material terms, all those pointless gadgets and so on, all seem to belong to a strange otherworld that I don’t really understand, and all those things are the sorts of stuff  I tend to see as being representative of the trappings of unnecessary greed and a lifestyle that not only can I never imagine living, but can never see myself ever wanting to live.

I can’t see any circumstances in which I would need such things as a helicopter or a speedboat, or would want to spend a quarter of a million pounds on a party that I wouldn’t even want to be at. Ostentatious displays of personal wealth like watches and jewellery or whiz-bang new gadgets just don’t interest me at all, and, to my mind, just make you a target for any villains that might spot you flashing your cash around. You can, after all, only drive one car at a time, or live in one house at a time.

I don’t know, perhaps it’s all symptomatic of a lack of ambition or imagination, but I’ve never really been impressed by the visibly wealthy. Perhaps this is just an acknowledgement that I’m unaware of the stupidly over-indulgent lifestyles of the rich and famous because I don’t read the kinds of magazines that tell the world about such things. Nevertheless, few of them seem to be very likeable, although I suspect “likeability” was never a huge priority to the blindly ambitious. Once upon a time I remember standing in a queue in my bank probably waiting to cash a cheque or pay a bill. I can’t really remember now and it probably doesn’t matter. I do remember that it was lunchtime and the bank was rather full of customers all patiently waiting in line as most of the staff had gone off to have their own lunches. Suddenly, an obviously very well-heeled chap very sure of his own self-importance walked in, barged in front of the whole lot of us and started demanding to see the bank manager immediately and, after barely taking the time to wait for an answer, actually played that last card proving all of his credentials (if they were needed) as an utter scoundrel “Don’t you know who I am?”

We didn’t of course, and, because it was a queue in England that we were all standing in, there was much tutting, eye-rolling and occasional glances in the direction of our fellow customers as we all found ourselves to be rightfully appalled at such a display of rudeness. Mind you, it did obviously work for him as he was led away very quickly into the inner sanctums of the bank and presumably given sherry and biscuits and a lot of the kind of attention that would make him very happy and able to spout off all that “So I told them…” garbage at the bar of the golf club later on that afternoon. In my mind, of course, I rather hoped that he was taken into a dark room and set about by the security staff, but I very much doubt that’s what happened.

Some might say that my attitude to all this is perhaps it’s because I’ve never been personally wealthy, but then an awful lot of the super-rich seem to live very unhappy lives. Their marriages seem to be built on greed and ambition and nothing so simple as basic trust. Can you honestly believe that if you are a single person of incredible financial means that any of those people showing an interest in you aren’t really just after your money? Then there’s the whole notion that the more you have, the more you have to lose, which must be terribly stressful. All of those heirs and heiresses that have been lost to drugs and car crashes due to their indolent lives and lack of any need to struggle along and suffer any real hardship can’t be brought back to life by their parents by the mere waving about of enough of the green stuff

Most of the time, when people start to talk about what they would do if they won that kind of money, it’s just “stuff” that they’re talking about, and most of that “stuff” is either pretty useless when you get down to basics of it all, or acquired just to inspire envy in others. In the end, if someone did hand me £161 million (Oops! It’s supposed to be untold wealth...), I  still can’t actually imagine what I could spend such a fortune on. People bandy these numbers around (five point six million this, twelve point nine million that) like so much birdseed, seeming to forget the sheer vastness of most of the amounts in relation to an ordinary income, and it is really only in relation to our ordinary incomes that we can build those fantasy shopping lists of buying six mansions simply because we could. However, amongst the more indulgent freedoms, well, buying expensive clothes doesn’t really interest me and I really don’t like parties that much anyway. I did once think it might be wise to have a “spare” car for when one is in for maintenance, but even that seems over-indulgent when I consider how much I complain about other households already having far too many cars as it is. In the end, I suppose that good works and charity would be the best things to spend it on, and making sure that me and mine felt financially secure for the rest of our naturals. Maybe I would want to find a way to help some people be employed, although I’ve never really wanted to be an employer.

Anyway, it’s not very likely to ever be a problem to me. The odds are massively against me ever having any semblance of financial stability and squillions to one against me being suddenly wealthy, which is probably just as well. I may dream of having a carefree life, but I think the reality of it might just scare me to death.