Liz Jones's Diary: In which I pay the price of success 

 

So, Sweetie was left, minus the fur on her back leg, at the vet’s overnight. 

She was in too much shock to be put under anaesthetic, so that happened the next day. 

The vet took X-rays, found nothing untoward, and sewed her up. 

I went to visit her, and there she was, wearing a collar to prevent her from gnawing at the wound, peering around like an Anglepoise. 

'The bill for my injured little cat has reached £500'

'The bill for my injured little cat has reached £500'

The bill, for me leaving the dogs in the house while I warmed a stir-fry, which meant they cornered and injured my little cat, has reached £500.

I’ve always found that when you don’t have money – viz, I still don’t have a kitchen in my house – it ends up costing you more. 

I pay interest every day to HMRC. I’m still paying interest on the credit card bill I ran up while in Somerset five years ago. 

The harder I work, the more I owe. It was prescient, when I suggested the title of my first ever column, back in 1999: I’d wanted to call it Poor Me.

And I’m always having my hopes raised, such as being summoned to London on a Monday – having been asked to ‘please consider’ an upmarket reality TV show that is ‘the opportunity of a lifetime’, which cost me the train fare, 24 hours’ parking at the station, two taxis and seven hours of travel in one day – to then be greeted every day by silence. 

I finally got this, two weeks later: ‘We’ve decided not to move forward with you.’

That pretty much sums up my life. 

I’m reminded of the time I went for a drink with a boy when I first moved to London: he went up to the bar to get me a Tab and never came back. 

The other day, so incensed was I at the lazy, 1950s platitudes being penned by someone else, I emailed her boss, sending her the one comment her article had garnered online – ‘Does anyone even care about this rubbish?’ – and my own take on the subject. 

Again, crushing silence. It’s as though I’m being boycotted, or at least put out to grass.

Which brings me to the horses: my two ponies, and Nic’s two quite big geldings. 

After I wrote about the stalker next door, whom I paid £3,000 a year for a limited amount of grazing, the horses have now been evicted. 

I tried to buy a field on my lane – at the price of £20,000 per acre; you see, there are myriad drawbacks to being well known – only to be told by my bank I couldn’t have a loan. 

We are now scouring the countryside, trying to find a good livery. 

The nearest will still mean Nic will spend four hours a day driving to and fro to look after them, and the cost far outstrips any interest I’d have paid to buy my own land. 

Isn’t it strange that you behave with integrity, pay full whack, and look after the animals to the best of your ability, and you are still scrabbling for crumbs while farmers rake in huge subsidies.

I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of getting out of bed each day and moving mountains. 

I want to go shopping. I want to not be frightened. 

In 2014, I bought just one garment: a T by Alexander Wang T-shirt, in the sale! It was less than £50. 

It makes me laugh when I give a talk – which is never accompanied by a fee, I might add – and young women come up and say, shiny-eyed: ‘I’m so jealous of your career! You are such a success!’

I wish someone had told me that with success comes huge cost: no privacy, huge expense in the shape of an agent and an accountant, the cost of paying staff because you have NO TIME.

Rivals posting Tweets that ruin not just your day, but your life. 

It is better to keep your head down, drink lattes, never try, and never, ever succeed.

Most days, the harsh truth is I just eat a bowl of porridge, and skip dinner so my dogs can eat. 

I honestly can say that being in debt, with no way out, no matter how many hours you work (I’ve not had a week off from writing since January 2014), is worse than having a serious illness. 

At least then you get a bit of sympathy. 

You still feel normal, in a way.

 

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