CHAMPAGNE TASTES AND NO BUDGET

I am on too many mailing lists, most of which hold no interest for me, because they’re related to things I looked into or bought for work. They therefore go to my work email and promptly get deleted as being irrelevant. But recently (around payday, which is plain sneaky on the part of the companies involved) I got a couple of demonic mail-outs about clothing… And I am such a girl.

I like new clothes, new shoes, new bags. I don’t actually need any of it, but I am far too good convincing myself otherwise. It’s the Irish in me – I can justify almost anything. Especially the lovely expensive well-cut quality fabric items.

You see, I have always suffered from champagne tastes. More than that, I have Dom Perignon tastes. And in good months, a merlot budget. Mostly, not even that. One of the doubtful joys (who am I kidding? One of the really nasty downsides) of being a freelancer is this variation in the budget. It’s very difficult to restrain myself when I am getting money in, even though I can see the end of the contract and I know the money will cease to come in very soon.

Thus you see the dilemma: live it up while the going is good or be sensible and plan ahead. And quite possibly, in either case, discovering that the choice you made was wrong and you could have/ should have done the other.

I can see the end of my contract looming from here. The light at the end of this somewhat hectic tunnel does, from my current vantage point, appear to be an oncoming train. Hopefully  it will turn out to be one I can jump aboard and ride on out of here, solvently, but for now I can only wait and see. (Yes, and job-hunt. I know. Clearly. Enough with the bleeding obvious already)

Champagne tastes (okay, so I don’t like champagne. How about single malt tastes? I do like a good, mellow single malt whisky. Speyside Scotch or Irish, I’m not quite that fussy) run in the family somewhat. My mother blames her grandfather, who was a cabinet-maker for one of the luxury ocean-liner companies up in Glasgow, back in the day. His job  required a feel for quality, which appears to be hereditary. And dominant. Just my luck.

But it got me thinking, before binning the pretty pictures (3 hours of make-up and lighting and posing per pack shot) and “exclusive discount” offers, about the difference between fashion and style.

If I was only interested in fashion, in trendy, then the tap water budget wouldn’t be an issue – it’s Primark’s raison d’être. Granted, if my interest in fashion had to do with labels rather than appearances, Primark wouldn’t be much good, and I’d be down TK MAXX every chance I got.

My problem isn’t fashionable tastes, it’s not prosecco or cava – it’s champagne, it’s single malts. Rather it is, as snobbish and pretentious as it sounds, about style, about quality. I like leather shoes over plastic, silk over viscose – everything horribly expensive over every more cost-effective and practical alternative. I can’t afford it – and this is one of the classic conundrums of socio-economics, as illustrated in the Vimes Boots theory (Terry Pratchett, “Guards Guards”) which I’ll paraphrase: only the wealthy can afford high-quality boots which will still keep their feet dry in ten years, while everyone else buys the cheaper option and after ten years, has spent twice as much and still has wet feet.

And as I’ve managed to justify the idea that the fewer my possessions the more important the aesthetics of each item, this is a trap I’ve set and baited for myself. Which is all very well, if only I wasn’t quite so keen to walk into it. In my cheaper option boots – merlot budget again.