Day 133: Pub Quiz Night

We woz robbed!

Monday nights have taken on a new entertainment.  I have a large network of cousins here in the city, and I have recently joined another three on their regular pub quiz night.  It doesn't happen every week, but most Mondays you will find us huddled over our pints and debating in fierce whispers the meaning of anthropophagy.* 

All in all it makes for a cheap and fun night out in happily familiar company.  It costs £1 each to enter the quiz, and the rest is just our drinks.  £3.60 in total for me tonight, then, which could have been worse, but is a lot out of £12.80.

The thing is, had we won, I would have been £10 up!  And for the first time ever, we were soooo close.  We led all the way until it came to the last round, which was a Hallowe'en-themed music round.  Our combined lack of knowledge of camp 70s rock was our undoing.

So we lost.  By 1/2 point.  Instead of a much needed £10, I have come home with a bottle of Budweiser to add to the WKD Blue Vodka I won a couple of weeks back.  It is a good return on a £1 entry fee, but not for me, because I detest the stuff.   

Ah well.  Next week's bonus round is on Tutankhamun.  I have been revising all week, which is why I could even spell his name without looking it up.  That bonus prize money will be ours!!

Total Remaining Assets: £9.20 (gulp)

*(It's cannibalism, btw.  We got there by marrying my dissection of 'anthropology' to lab technician Cousin Nic's knowledge of white-cell-eating blood disorders.  Class!)

Day 132: Cheap Lunches

There is no such thing as a free lunch, they say.  But there is such a thing as a cheap lunch.  And of course, it involves making it yourself.

Armed with my £20, I headed off to Lidl this afternoon, and returned triumphantly with a packet of 6 morning rolls, a lump of Emmenthal cheese, a packet of salami, some cream cheese, and a packet of ham.  The total came to £4.70.  Oh, and I added in a very large pack of crisps and some fruit.  Add another £2.50.

And now I have in my freezer two Emmenthal-and-Salami rolls, two ham-and-cream cheese rolls, and another couple of variations using up half a tomato I had in the fridge.  Now, compare the average price of  78p to the minimum of £2.80 that a sandwich costs in my work cafeteria.  And in fact, given that I have more than half all the filling ingredients left over, the cost of each roll is close to 45p.  Can't be bad.

So lunch for the next week is going to cost about 80p each day.  And I have the ingredients of not a few pasta suppers to boot.  A good investment of (nearly half!) my £20.

Total Assets: £12.80

Day 131: The Crunch

Yes, it has come to it.  I am now within spitting distance of the situation called No Money At All.

It makes me repent of my previous blithe claims to having 'no money'.  For example, while it is true in principle, one does not have No Money in practice while one is still within one's overdraft limit.  For in practice, one can still go to the bank and withdraw £10 and buy oneself a sandwich. 

But now I am at the limits even of that.  That the situation is not my fault does not help.  Basically, money that I should have been paid has not yet been paid.  I am chasing it up, and there is no fear that it will not ultimately be paid, but the fact is, it should have been in my bank account by this weekend, and it is not.  And I was relying on it.

My entire worldly wealth is the £20 note in my purse.

So I shall be carefully husbanding the money this week.  I have to spend some to save some, but I have to budget for every penny.  If there is a bright side, it is that I shall definitely save money.  After all, one cannot spend what one does not have.

Assets: £20