“Surely that’s wrong,” I thought, as I looked at my bill from Bulb. Yeah I know the narrative is all about how we need to switch everything off and it’s still going to be more expensive than ever before. I get it, oil company execs need to make all the money now before it runs out. But over £300 in just a month? Christ that’s a whopper.
Thankfully I had a huge balance on the Bulb account which I’ve been thinking of claiming back. They take your money in advance and build up credit. I always thought that was a bit dodgy. Multiply by all their customers and it’s a wonder they went into administration. But that credit is welcome now. “I’ll spend it eventually,” I thought when I decided not to claim it and oops yep now it’s gone. A month of a constantly warm flat and loads of hot baths. That’ll do it. Lovely not to be freezing my butt off at home, but for the rest of the month I’m gonna be hoping it warms up outside as it’s me and the electric blanket and as little gas as I can get away with.
The best way to get people to change their habits is to hit them in the wallet. I gave up smoking when I didn’t have enough for fags and food at the same time. I was working in some pub theatre thinking it would bring me “exposure”. I made the right choice that time, didn’t buy cigarettes and … something in my head shifted and I didn’t take a free one off Eddie at lunch. Haven’t smoked since and that was decades ago.
A bill like that, despite this rather odd £60 monthly subsidy, is a very good way to make a man with sporadic income and expensive tastes stop and think about what he leaves on and when, and his expensive habits.
And that’s across the country right now on these cold days. The government is making videos about it that autoplay on social media. We are all having to find ways to cut costs. If you’ve got kids, hard to make them ok with being freezing cold though so I’m glad that’s not part of my to do list.
I grew up in a cold house. Dad was frugal. Mony a mickle maks a muckle. I can go back to selective warmth for a while. Cranking up the heating is my teenage expression of being independent, that’s all. I have very little guaranteed income when I project forward the next few months. Gotta be careful careful careful and another month with a bill like that and I’m gonna be eating rice until June and doing no driving. This is across the country in the last days of this rollercoaster of clowns. It sucks but at least we’re all broke together! We can share tips about how to cook cardboard.
I’m back in the smoke. Dayjobbish work things are gently shifting and I have to plug into them. Time to try and step it up. Wouldn’t it be lovely to just pay that bill without even noticing… Gotta keep rolling the dice, sending the emails, shifting the energy. Good things somewhere. Just have to find them…
AlBarclay 