If I had more money …

If I had more money …

• I could live in a bigger house. I could have my own music room, we could have two bathrooms so I would not have to fret about my bladder bursting when we had visitors.
• I could drive a bigger car and wouldn’t need to put my golf clubs on the back seat because they don’t fit in the boot.
• I could have my teeth fixed, just like Jürgen Klopp did, and smile with more confidence.
• I could have bigger and more expensive holidays, flying club class instead of cattle class.
• I could by a state of the art music system and buy every record I ever dreamed of buying.
• I could catch the train to anywhere I liked in the UK.
• I could buy a holiday home somewhere warm and sunny all year round.
• I could go to any gig and sports event I wanted to, always sitting in the best seats.
• I could upgrade my PC, phone and laptop to the best in the world.
• I could go to any restaurant I fancied, rather than somewhere like a Beefeater or even McDonalds.
• I could buy art from my favourite artist Ken Done and hang his works all over the house.
• I could install a swimming pool inside my new mansion.
• I could have surgery to make me look better (I would need a lot of money to do this).
• I could take out membership at a top golf club and have lessons from the club pro to take my game to a more acceptable level.

All these things and more. All I need is more money, a lot more money.

Mind you, all the money in the world would not allow me to live forever. All that extra money could see me eating and drinking more crap. I might die sooner. Richer but sooner.

More money would not keep cancer at bay, or dementia, or a debilitating heart condition. That bigger house and bigger car – well, they’re just dreams, my wild imaginings. And, actually, I don’t really think like this at all.

We dream a bit, don’t we? My bucket list holidays include The Maldives, Tuscany, Bali. I’m not going to get to any of them, I don’t think. And as for cars, well cars don’t impress me much. A nice Porsche sporty type thing? What fucking use is that? No good for going on holiday with the family. And it would look ridiculous with a roof box. (Every car looks ridiculous with a roof box, mind.)

The rest of the “If I had more money” items, I don’t really mean them. If someone wants to buy me some Ken Done merch, then I’ll take it. An executive box at Anfield? If I must. A swimming pool next to the living room? Nah. I don’t even like swimming.

I might as well say that I’d like to be the richest man in the graveyard because that’s exactly what could happen. I love the material world in which I have invested – those records, those books, the odd bit of artwork here and there – but hang on. There are other things that matter more.

Being alive for one. Being alive, to the best of my knowledge, though I could be wrong, with no immediate expectation of expiring. If I am alive in a little house, driving a little car, having crappy warped teeth, a regular two overseas holidays a year, a perfectly adequate music system, the wherewithal to travel at least locally by train, to live in a country where it usually pisses down with rain and, do I need to go on?

If I had more money, if I were a rich man, ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum. All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. But I’m not and I’m unable to biddy biddy bum. And while I am part of the material world, material doesn’t mean everything.

You mean everything. You, my family and friends. You, people I have never met. And my life itself, ripped and torn by the ravages of mental illness, does not depend on that house, that car, that big fuck off holiday.

More money would be handy, but in the end it would be useless. Your life, your good health, your happiness matters more than the semi-detached suburban utopia some might crave. Today, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I appreciate it still more.

2024 is becoming a year of reckoning, a time when I finally work out what’s real and what’s make believe. I think I’m nearly there, too.

Social media is a place where people share what is really their decadence, their latent exhibitionism, boasting of the acquisition of things, of possessions, of expensive holidays, the perhaps unintended suggestion that my life is better than yours and here’s a selfie because I love myself. Maybe I am being harsh – I think, maybe, I am, though not with everyone – but the older I get the less I believe the material world matters as much.

In the ways that matter, I am rich, richer than many people who are actually rich. Every loser wins, as the actor Nick Berry once put it. It was a pretty shit song, but in my life I think I have won. When this life is all over, we’ll be the same. In my world, we’re all the same now. And no one’s Porsche, luxury pile in the country or their expensive jewellry set will persuade me otherwise.