One of the few moments of joy I've experienced during the mostly hellish experience of packing up all my worldly possessions over the past few days has been..... the discovery of an envelope full of money that I'd completely forgotten about. Only 5,000 rmb, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. As I have remarked before, at moments like this I feel as though The Tooth Fairy is belatedly making good on a payment she overlooked in my long-ago childhood. Ah, compound interest - it's a wonderful thing. Alas, my initial happiness soon gave way to a creeping paranoia that there may perhaps have been several other such forgotten envelopes of money lying about the place that I've now thrown out with the trash. Oh, please, NO. |
Saturday, November 21, 2009
A pleasant surprise
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Snap! We had our moment of joy yesterday: we found in a drawer, under a load of old spectacle cases, single gloves, bunches of mysterious keys etc, a fancy pouch containing nine five-pound notes, crisp and unused; we had no idea why or for whom we had put them aside. It must have been many years ago because they were of a design which looked unfamiliar; anyway,when we used them to pay for a lunch today the cashier was intrigued but said they were OK.
Keep it quiet, Froog - if the landlord finds out he/she will be putting in a claim.
Takes me back to Basil Fawlty in the episode where Mrs Richards (?) lost some money:
"for the first time in my life I'm up on the deal"
Well, there's a curious karmic coincidence, Tony.
My unexpected windfall would buy me four or five dozen nice lunches or dinners, but I'm trying to resist the temptation to go on a spending spree.
I wonder if we don't plant these spirit-lifting little surprises for ourselves. It is uncanny, though, how thoroughly we manage to erase the memory of having done so.
Well, the other possibility is that our future selves are taking advantage of the sudden invention of time travel to go back and treat our present ones. (We know well the dangers of interfering too profoundly, though, which is why we don't simply share winning lottery combinations.)
Be funny if the Chinese weather machine were to malfunction and turn itself into a time-travel device. Maybe it's just bringing back sunny days (or rainy ones, as the case may be) from the future.
Not so far from the truth, JES. I'm sure the drought that has crippled north China this year is at least partly the result of the intensified 'weather management' in Beijing for the Olympics last year.
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