Skint

 

It’s a terrible thing, to have time and no money on a beautiful morning like this.  You throw open the curtains and the day calls to you, invites you to share in its possibilities.  Blue sky and sun, and the slightest of hazes that makes the world outside your window seem to shimmer with expectation.  It’s been a long winter, after all.  You prepare yourself to meet the day with a growing sense of excitement.  You sing to yourself in the shower, you are suffused with goodwill as you sip your coffee.  And as you sip your coffee, you make your plans for this perfect day.

This, of course, is when it hits you.  Your options are severely curtailed.  Your initial response was, inevitably,  to flit from pub to pub for a while, basking in the atmosphere that only a sunny day can bring, letting what will happen, happen. The pub on the brink of summer is the embodiment of exactly that sense of freedom that you long to embrace.  The pub, though, at any time of year, is an expensive proposition, and its freedom does not come cheap.  In your mind you run through some economic gymnastics, but no matter how many financial somersaults you perform, there’s no way to square an embrace of the day with the more prosaic pecuniary necessities of living.

Your longing, your desire, is turned back on itself, your cheerful mood is frustrated.  There are other options, of course, some as simple as going for a walk.  But a walk for you is always a walk to the pub, and if it isn’t it only serves to emphasise that the day you wanted is not to be yours.  As the sense of freedom fades, any other course of action loses its flavour.  The sense of possibility has no way to express itself, and the sunny day becomes dead weight to be suffered.  You draw the curtains, and pass the day in shadows.