Exigencies

"You can't take it with you", they say, and they're right. When I died, in the dreary Gaulish villa where I spent my exile, I had saved up a neat little stash of silver talents (I'm old fashioned about money) in a secret hole under the hearth in my bedroom. I remember quite clearly how, in between coughings up of blood and feverish deliriums, I felt terribly cross that I hadn't invested some of that stash in something attractive for the ceiling. One doesn't realise, when one is well, quite how important a companion a ceiling can become over the course of a nice sustained final illness. I spent hours staring at mine - which was rather mouldy, and low enough that as the weeks passed it was covered with the bloody spatterings of lung that I vented every night. It squatted over me like a toad, crushing the last life out of me with its mottled vile underbelly. How I cursed my lack of forethought, that I had hoarded my wealth uselessly rather than investing it in some pleasant bucolic scene which could have eased my passing!

That then was a lesson learnt in the virtues of extravagance - but one that alas I can't, as I am, put into practice. For I find myself, not only adrift in a time that's not my own, but also entirely without the wherewithal to support myself. Therefore today's musings are cut short - I'm off to the job centre. Let's see what a King of Galilee can turn his hand to!