Manners Makyth Man
My old tutor finally snuffed it and the college has written asking for donations to a memorial fund. The current tutors are donating GBP100 each – because they are academics and poorly paid. Or they are mean buggers. Now should I also be a mean bugger and chip in GBP100? – let’s face it, I barely interacted with the guy, apart from being thrown out of a tutorial on Ben Jonson for failing to be able to name a single character in Volpone. Including Volpone. Or should I be flash and chip in more, which I would only be doing to rub their noses in the fact that they might be Oxford dons and all-round top brains, but I’m still richer than they are? Not in the things of the spirit, obviously, as this little dilemma fittingly illustrates. Just in filthy lucre.
posted by FBT at 8:13 am
11 Comments:
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You should send them a 10 quid note.
Stick it in an envelope with a note written on Mandarin Oriental paper sprayed in Channel and have it chauffeur driven to them in the back of a gold Rolls Royce.
This way you can be really tight but at the same time show them how fucking rich and successful you are. They will certainly be impressed.
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I think the solution lies in the answer to the following question: how much would he have sent if you had snuffed it first?
Tax break. More might work in your favour. Also, for schools, often your contribution will be matched or qualify them for more donations from someone with even more dosh than you, rich girl.
In those cases, it can be a count of % participation, not total cash raised, thus 10 or 100 matters naught.
Memories have to be topped up from time to time, Phiz.
I would need to be 20 again unfortunately.
I'll take the bait (though it seems I am not the first): a hundred pounds seems not ungenerous.
Words to cheer a fellow Oxonian from Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' (I can never remember jokes):
'Though God accept their prayers freely and give gold with ungrudging hand, and deck with honours those who deserve them, yet when they are gotten, these gifts seem naught. Wild greed swallows what it has sought, and still gapes wide for more. What bit or bridle will hold within its course this headlong lust, when, whetted by abundance of rich gifts, the thirst for possession burns? Never call we that man rich who is ever trembling in haste and groaning for that he thinks he lack.'
yes, he's not a laugh a minute, is he, old Boethius?
What would Volpone have done?
I regret that my ignorance of Volpone's motivation remains pristine.
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