Sod it, I went for it!
Sod it! is something of a family tradition.
I grew up in a family of safe rows… anger or passion was expressed loudly and openly yet we all felt safe in our familial love. Loud exclamations did not make us cower, but hold our ground and shout back. Shouting and rowing and anger were not a precursor to anything in particular. Maybe it’s a working class thing, or maybe its us, who knows? I say all this as I know of many households where the mildest of raised voices was seen as a terrible event and everyone backed away from disagreement, cementing their compromising life. Such friends cannot comprehend that loud rowing is nothing to worry about, ever.
In my youth most of the rows between my parents were over money, or rather the lack of it. Dad was a cop when they were paid low wages, mum was a nurse when that meant underpaid handmaiden to elite godhead doctors. We scraped by. We ate well but anything not ‘day to day’, such as new shoes, was hard to finance. We were no different to almost all the people I knew.
The row over money often ended the same way… with mum and dad, separately embodying the ‘sod it’ philosophy. Because we were strapped for cash, after the row subsided mum would go one direction and dad the other. I can remember more than one occasion when this resulted in dad returning with a new car and mum having ordered new furniture!
They just though, ‘sod it’ life is too short to be spent in denial. That’s why HP was created, right? Clothes were bought from catalogues, furniture came on the ‘never never’ and new (to us) cars were via a loan. We never had a brand new car, that was the thing of dreams. Dad made any furniture that was all wood, the rest came on a ‘buy now, pay later’ basis.
In lockdown for the best part of a year with my small business income through the floor; with savings dwindling and the impossibility of a holiday irking; without even the chance to visit family, is it any wonder that ‘Sod It!’ ruled my actions?
The country is ever more indebted, as are most of the population… satisfying one’s acquisitive whims is possible through what someone close to me calls ‘buy now, shit yourself later’ – credit streams are ever ready to soak up our desires and gratify our ‘needs’.
I justify my unaffordable extravagance by pointing out to myself that my main hobby is birding, surely getting the best you can’t afford is warranted. So here it is… the over-priced but best…
Swarovski ATX 95
It might look little different to my current (soon, hopefully, to be sold) ATS 80, but the wider field of view should make distant ducks distinguishable.
Anyone out there want a pre-loved scope?
