I’ve just had lunch at work: tinned spaghetti on toast. A colleague came over to see what I was eating, looking really unimpressed at my choice of meal. I explained that, at 11p (7p for half a tin of spaghetti and 4p for a couple of slices of bread) it was pretty good value. I then realise that my apple (£1 for 7 in the market) more than doubled the price of my meal.
A couple of colleagues asked why I couldn’t buy pasta or rice and cook something from scratch, but I’m sceptical that it would be as cheap. Then there’s the fact that rice and pasta are forming the basis of most of the meals I’m cooking at the moment. Couldn’t I at least have backed beans, I was asked. But baked beans are at least twice the price.
I suddenly got a glimpse of how people on low incomes feel when well-meaning but clueless people with no experience of poverty express their dissatisfaction at how the less well-off spend their meagre incomes.
Yes, I do have £2.20 left until Wednesday, so could technically afford a tin of beans. But it’s not nice to know that you haven’t got a penny to your name – all manner of unexpected events might call for some cash in the next 36 hours. As it is, I hadn’t factored into my week’s budget another colleagues leaving do tomorrow, so I’m going to have to turn up at that without enough to buy a drink. Being skint sucks.
