Along with that, I have been sent a bill to insure my house against fire and another against robbery. OK, I'll pay them even though I don't own the house where I live. I decided to sell and rent for a while until the right house came along, because the last one definitely wasn't. I had so many costs, mainly for renovation, that along with the bills it just got out of hand.
On top of those, which amount to about 170 euro, there is the social security, which I need to pay myself as a freelancer. This comes to approximately 600 euro, payable every quarter. So let's say 200 a month. However, as a freelancer, it means I can't claim unemployment benefit and my state pension is lower than others because according to the government I'm stinking rich and able to afford it.
Like my plumber. I had a blocked kitchen sink and after pouring every conceivable liquid into it, putting balls on string in there until there was a noise, all types of efforts, nothing surfaced, only the dirty water, which drained away almost glacially down the hole. He came, poured some of his own product (imported from Italy, priceless stuff apparently) into the pipe and sent me his bill of 145 euro for 15 minutes' chat and 3 minutes' work. Yes, this type of pricing is surely why the government thinks I can afford to contribute so heavily to the economy as well as sacrifice my pension to fill a hole in society so some workshy couch potato can put an extra bet on the horses and buy bottled Stella instead of canned.
So far, the amount has reached 1270 euro. Now we turn to the little matter of the insurance claim by the bus company, who thinks I owe them 245 euro worth of paint for an accident where a stick of about 50cm long and made of MDF was catapulted out of the container I was throwing stuff onto, hitting the... wait for it... WINDOW of the bus. If they had sent me a bill for broken glass, I would have paid immediately, but as it was for paint I've replied rather unrepentantly on a few occasions to their threatening literature. In a few days' time, apparently, I'm going to receive a court summons.
My household bills add up to about 1300 euro (rent, cable TV, Visa, energy), so that brings the total up to 2815 euro. And I'm supposed to pay to travel to work each day, buy lunch there, invest in clothes; oh yes, and buy food for the rest of the daily meals. So we're looking at a further 330 euro approximately. We've hit the three-thousand mark and gone above it and landed at 3145 euro.
Fortunately, I'm not tempted by the consumer ads which try to persuade me to buy any number of things which I might need one day, like electric blankets, garden gnomes, clocks which tell you the date, temperature and current weather conditions (look outside your window, stoopid!), Xboxes, MP3 players (burn them!) and sunglasses whose shades automatically darken when you turn into the sun. Because if I were, I'd be making plans to auction off this computer to subsidise my retail obsession.
By the way, I received a tax bill of 5300 euro, because apparently I can afford it. So if any of you reading this who know me wonder why I haven't seen you for a while, it's because it's expensive when you're presumed to be rich...
