The Last Word

PENNY PINCHING

Usually what happens at this time of the month is I sit down at my computer with a subject in mind to write about and proceed to do just that. This month though there are two things going on that deserve a mention and they are sort of linked. One is the ongoing and potentially troublesome cost of living situation and the other is Bath

Rugby and their woeful/dreadful/ appalling/rotten (insert your choice of other appropriately terrible adjectives!!) season in the Gallagher

Premiership and, actually, every other competition they entered in the 2021/22 season.

My wife and I are avid fans of Bath Rugby and try to get to as many home games as we can; BC (Before Children!) we made the odd away game too. Now obviously that comes at a price and usually it’s not too much of a problem as we don’t have quite the social life that we used to so our social budget, as it were, is spent on a trip to the rugby on a Saturday afternoon.

With everything increasing in price recently we’ve had to reassess our spending as travelling to The Rec every couple of weeks just to get a beating from whoever we’re playing doesn’t seem like enormously good value. Isn’t one definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result? That’s us every second Saturday!! Of course we will actually persevere, possibly because we are a bit insane, but also it’s a nice day out if nothing else!!! This leads into the cost of living situation that is happening at the moment which is undoubtedly quite a challenge and, it seems, is set to get worse before it gets better. As well as our rugby expenditure we’ve had to look at everything else we spend money on to see if savings can be made. However small they might be if you add it all up it can make quite a difference. Sir Dave Brailsford, the former head of the enormously successful (though not

entirely uncontroversial) Team Sky and British Cycling, made famous the idea of ‘marginal gains’ - doing enough of the little things they add up to a big change (my wife used a sporting analogy to get me on board). We have had a smart meter and accompanying in-home display unit for a few years now and have never really bothered too much with it (it resided in a drawer until fairly recently). But now with electricity and gas prices going up by so much we watch that little screen almost as much as the TV. The heating was turned off earlier this year, we switch off every standby appliance overnight, the lights and TVs are turned off when we leave the room and a myriad of other small things have helped us to decrease our electricity usage by more than a third! We are fortunate enough to have solar panels too - the sight of us rushing to turn everything electrical on when the sun peeps out from behind the clouds is something to behold, I reckon my wife could have a career as a formula one pits mechanic the speed she can get the washing machine on when called upon! As a confirmed luddite I’m not sure exactly how it works but essentially when the sun shines we can do some electrical stuff for free, which is handy. This means though that we try and save the washing for a sunny day as we only pay for the water and detergent and then dry it outside on the line.

This works brilliantly unless of course you have a sustained period of drab weather or rain and the ‘clothes mountain’ piles up which obviously is not ideal.

We are, as everybody will I think, have to tighten our belts. It’s just the way it is at the moment but I think Bath Rugby might just squeeze into our monthly spend…they’ll do better next season won’t they???

“We are fortunate enough to have solar panels too - the sight of us rushing to turn everything electrical on when the sun peeps out from behind the clouds is something to behold”

Phil Rockliffe