Rich

I saw a weasel (stoat?) in the nature reserve yesterday. It was small, with a chestnut coat and bright white bib, bouncing along a mud track playing with what looked like a big clot of clay. It looked so happy, and made me happy just by watching it!

Then into town; the Fringe is extremely pretty this year, probably to make up for the disaster of last years bin strike. None of that now, the streets are full of people and petunia barrels. My friend has come up, and tonight we will go see a show, but yesterday it was all about meeting other friends and recounting adventures. I have been a bit worried about her because the Spanish adventure came to an end and one of her cats died of FIV, but Whimsy does not stay down long. She found an empty shell of a place in the Spanish mountains, turned it into a fairy tale cottage, sold it to a wealthy artist. She still has the place in Tooting, and the office space in Brixton, still has the business which is now worth a couple of million, private pensions etc...

'You can do so much!' I said to her when she told me all about it.
'I can do anything I like!' She beamed at me. Her next adventure may well be a move to Glastonbury, and she's thinking of creating some kind of social space, maybe even buy a pub.
'I must be doing,' she said. Yes but a pub? Been a while, I'm guessing, since she's served behind a bar and despite the protests of a couple of mates down there, I don't think the pubs are that bad. The George and Pilgrim sweeps up a lot of custom in the middle of town, all stone floors/wood panels/ history, and there's plenty of competition beyond its walls. But if anyone can make a strange project work, she can, and yes, she must be doing. There we sat last night, her face lit up with friends around her, watching the world full of people eating and drinking, playing music, planning shows. My friend has a kind of innocence in her money, delighting in it, like that weasel/stoat larking around by the burn. There are these financial exemplars, icons of having, Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk, men whose faces shine like wax polish and they have so much yet seem so grey. I never saw rich as radiant as yesterday. Rich is happiness and freedom from need, freedom to do what you like rather than what you must. Rich is having time to play with a clot of mud or sit in a pub full of mates if you want.

It's good to be rich.