The day before yesterday turned out to be a nice quiet day and after extended chats with my family first thing in the morning and then with my Italian friend later in the day, I was quite content to have a delayed lunch and then a quiet afternoon reading. Over the last weekend, there were some articles in ‘The Times‘ weekend supplement which I found very interesting and am sharing with any of my visitors to the house. There were three articles of which the first was headlined ‘Single for 10 years – and I love it!’ and the theme was of the consequences of living alone perhaps when in your 40’s after a marriage or relationship had broken down. All of the three articles were written by women but they could apply equally to men as well. They detail how all anticipated that their enforced state of living alone might be temporary and it was probable that they would enter now into new relationships. But this did not happen and, after a period of time being free and independent and having to organise everything oneself, often involving looking after teenagers, the contributors realised that they quite liked living alone and were starting to appreciate some advantages. I think they had all tried some dating apps and always found them unsatisfactory with time-wasters, retreads and people coming along ‘with baggage’ They would all quite welcome a new relationship with a man if one were to happen and, more particularly, they were to meet in what you might call the ‘normal’ process of living such as shopping or whilst participating in keep-fit activities. Now being alone myself for the first time in my life, I found this article had a particular resonance and can fully appreciate what led the contributors to their conclusions. Men are sometimes seen as being as needy as small babies and dispensable and, often in the case of these women at this stage in their life cycle, they derived a lot of satisfaction from their other women friends with whom they liked to socialise and even have as holiday companions. A common theme was none were ‘men-haters’ and would actually quite like a new relationship to happen but often it just did not occur and, in the meantime, all kinds of advantages could be seen in the independence that they were currently enjoying.
There was a report in ‘Sky News‘ that the already very wealthy had a particular dislike of higher income taxes. But I want to apply a little bit of economic theory to this which I learned as a teenage when I was studying economics for my ‘A’-level exam. What I had in mind is ‘marginal utility’ theory and I remember expanding on it at great length when I asked in an interview at York University which economic concepts had greatest applicability outside economics itself. Marginal utility theory postulates that the extra satisfaction you derive from each extra unit of consumption declines as you consume more. So on a hot day, the first glass of beer might give you most satisfaction but this declines with the second and the third glass and so on. But the whole argument applied to income itself in that as you earn or acquire more, the marginal utility of each extra pound of income will decline. Now if you define income tax as negative income, then the marginal disutility of negative income will also decline. This means that the extra ‘pain’ of each extra pound of tax will decline as you earn more and more. But politically, this means that the rich can pay more tax but the extra tax hurts them less and less. The trouble with applying the theory is that the rich shout loudest and have access to political power to prevent high rates of taxation whilst the poor bear quite a lot of pain from the taxes that they endure but thy just have to get on with it.
I the morning I went shopping to Lidl and this was only my second venture into the store. I found it a lot larger than the Aldi store in which I used to shop and therefore fuller of all kinds of things I would never purchase in the first place. In fact, I did spend some time looking for (and not finding) quite a simple item and some of the things that I buy regularly but no doubt as the weeks roll by, I will learn to locate my favourites. After a simple lunch I cooked an apple crumble in preparation for the meal that I am sharing tonight with a friend who is popping by. The beautiful cooking apples that I am using were left in a box by the side of someone’s house with an invitation to help yourself which I did but shared them with our domestic help who called around this morning. The apple crumble has been prepared but not yet baked but I will serve it with some ice-cream as a dessert. Later in the afternoon, I went to collect Meg’s ashes which are safely within a special box supplied by the undertakers but later I shall get a more specialist urn for the purpose. It really is rather a strange sensation bringing one’s life partner back inside the house but in the form of a box of ashes but there we are. In the fullness of time, then I myself am cremated, then my son has been instructed to mingle my ashes with those of Meg and the two to be sprinkled together in Derwentwater, near Keswick in the Lake District. I had only been back inside the house for a few minutes when our chiropodist calls around and we always have a good chat about every subject under the sun. Then it was time to start some of the vegetable preparation for the meal we are having this evening which is going to be a special treat of some rib-eye steak and good vegetables to accompany it. I cannot recall the last occasion I had a steak in this country but I am very partial to ‘buey’ or ‘ox-meat’ which is a real delicacy in Spain. As I remember how they serve it in good restaurants, then quite a hunk of meat is taken from a larger carcase which has been slow