Riverford Organic Farmers: ‘Are you sure you want to empty this delivery?’
Me: ‘Yes!’
I’m writing this on 2 March and I have £40 left in my Barclays Basic account. I had to pay £500 off my vet bill as they were refusing treatment; this despite the Petplan insurance for the dogs and horses amounting to £289.06 a month. Just the rent of paddocks and stables for my horses is £700 a month: on top of that is feed, farrier, dentist, bedding.
I’m paid very well, but my mortgage is £3,037 a month: I could only buy a house six years after bankruptcy and, as no one would lend past the age of 75, it’s over a short term for a loan just north of £200,000, and of course at a higher rate of interest than for someone who isn’t me, or Boris Becker.
I work from home, but can’t put the heating on (it’s currently 2 degrees as I write at 7am), as I’m still paying £250 a month to settle the £10,000 bill Octopus landed me with when I left the rented, tiny cottage, on top of the £575 a month they insist I now pay at the new house*. This, despite an air source heat pump and log burner.
I no longer have a washing machine or tumble dryer, as both were destroyed when my cellar flooded; I can’t afford contents insurance. I haven’t bought any new clothes for more than two years. You might say, oh, she has Turkey teeth and new whizzy hearing aids and eyebrows, but that was work, and I didn’t pay for any of it.
That same sort of chippy ignorance was apparent at HMRC, when during a meeting they showed me my columns about attending Paris Fashion Week and the trial of John Galliano. ‘How could you afford that?’ they said, waggling the pages cut from YOU magazine and the Daily Mail.
‘It was work.’ What did they expect me to do, report from the shows by peering at the photos on vogue.com? How then would I have been able to tell you that the screensaver on the phone belonging to Carine Roitfeld was a photo of… herself. Or how would I have earwigged a supermodel, backstage at Armani, being told her hips were so wide she would barely fit down the runway?
Yes, I employ a well-paid (by me) full-time PA and horse whisperer, but without her I wouldn’t be able to travel on assignment, or cope with my inbox and workload. My accountant has charged me over £1,000 a month for the past ten years: he looks after payroll, employer’s National Insurance, VAT. I receive the State Pension, but as I’m still working it’s heavily taxed. HMRC as good as barred me from a private pension.
I wasn’t allowed to know what happened to the cottage I bought my sister (that mortgage cost me £1,750 a month for six years): does she own it outright now, paid for with her retirement lump sum from the NHS? Who knows? I’ve never taken a day off sick in more than 40 years and even worked the day my mum died.
After the Tracey Emin gala last week, my friend asked me to join her for a drink at her London flat (she also has homes in Wales and Cornwall). The floor-to-ceiling windows and terrace showcase a view of the Tower of London across the Thames, Tower Bridge glittering alongside, the glass tower of Bishopsgate gleaming, the spire of the Shard to our left.
As I sat sipping Nyetimber, I wondered how it has come to this. We are almost the same age, she, like me, is entirely self-made, but I’m sat there worrying about affording an Uber back to my hotel room.
I’m shortlisted for Columnist Of The Year at The Press Awards (the journalism Oscars) in May: attendance alone will cost me not far shy of £500, and that’s without buying a new dress. I might have to do a Marlon Brando.
*After I wrote about Octopus increasing my direct debit the other week, my inbox has been heaving with disgruntled customers. One wrote: ‘Their demands to me dwarf yours by about 30-fold! Despite the warm words and love and kisses sign-offs in their torrents of hectoring emails and texts, they are ruthless!’
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- Another email this morning from Octopus: ‘We will collect £4,886.99 on 1 April. Yeah, well, good luck with that.
- I’m braced for the clocks changing: it’s as convoluted as landing Apollo 11!
- Did you see Demi Moore on the red carpet? Proof you can be too rich and way too thin.
