Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

These last few weeks I have been trying desperately to economise; I've been cooking with leftovers, trying to live without the central heating (impossible, I am always freezing), feeding the cats economy catfood (which they loathe).  

Today I had 2 financial disasters:  both the dishwasher and the fridge gave up the ghost.  My fridge was a rather gorgeous, retro styled cream Smeg. Beautiful, expensive, but a bit crap really.  My milk and eggs were always going off (not a metaphor for the savagery of aging or the ticking of my biological clock, just a reference to the Smeg's constant state of luke-warmness). 

I have replaced it with a Baumatic Retro cream fridge freezer, half the price of a Smeg.  In fact, I think I prefer it, it looks like the kind of fridge Samantha from Bewitched would use to store her love potions in.  I love 1950s styled kitchens.  I would really love a '50s diner-style, formica topped table and chairs.

I've also ordered a new dishwasher, I really couldn't live without one.  I had to wash dishes today, in a sink, for the first time in 5 years.  It was not pleasant.  I felt like Hilda Ogden. Washing dishes by hand would be the first furry-slippered step towards a grim, northern middle age.  Initially I may find myself innocently sporting pink rubber gloves and a jaunty apron, but soon I'd be bedecked in rollers and a headscarf and within a month I'd be pushing a tartan shopping trolley full of Fray Bentos pies round Lidl, wearing frosted coral lipstick and American tan tights.  All because I was too stingy to buy a new dishwasher.  It shall not happen!  

I also need to find a handyman to do lots of jobs round the house.  PC Adonis suggested I put carpet gripper on top of my fence, as a deterrent to the criminal denizens of the neighbourhood.  I have to say, I like the idea of coming down every morning and finding half a dozen thuggish and greasy scuzz-hounds stuck by their shell-suits to the gripper rods, like bluebottles on fly paper!  I could throw my rotten eggs at them.  It would be like a 21st century version of the stocks!