The Dream was always delicately balanced. We don’t have much money and the only savings we have have been accrued over the past year. The house is worth more than a house in Lewis but, given the way prices have gone in the past five years, not considerably more. We still have a mortgage to pay and over half of our monthly income goes to paying that. I worked it all out though and, assuming nothing changed, August 2010 would be when we could leave a life no longer enjoyed and begin again.
Today my wife, Sandy, found out that she will be made redundant next week as part of the sacrifice of this country’s heritage - the desecration of the famous name of Wedgwood in order that rich Americans can get richer and rich Administrators can get bigger cars and bigger houses. Nobody, certainly not the government, cares any longer about the heritage of this country. The Wedgwood family wanted to buy the company and would have kept it trading but that was not good enough, keeping part of the country’s history counted for nothing at the altar of the money-grabbers. No lessons have been learned from the banking fiasco and money rules now as much as it has done for the past several years. There are many more Fred Goodwins nobody yet knows about and the Prime Minister nobody elected has neither the balls nor the ability to do anything about it.
One day, when Sandy has the money that is due to her, I might tell a bit about the obscene amounts of money that have gone into various pockets as Waterford Wedgwood was cut up and its heritage turned to money for those who have no real understanding of ordinary people’s lives. Where have the days gone when there were honest men as well as thieves?
So what of the future now? We don’t really know yet but the Dream depended on our having enough savings to tide us through the first year and on reducing the mortgage sufficiently to retain enough from the sale of the house for us to buy another house in the Outer Hebrides. Maybe it will still be okay but if our son, aged 24 and with a University degree, has been unable to find a job in over six months what chance is there for someone of retirement age?
