We all talk about money in January and February

There was a photograph of the African American rapper Kanye West in London’s Metro a month after Christmas. He was with the 31-year-old stunning actress Julia Fox.

Now.

Kanye West – who was married to Kim Kardashian – is said to be $1.8 billion. He has four children, all with Kim Kardashian, who is also pretty and rich.

So what about the London Metro pic?

Its long caption screamed, “Fox (new girlfriend) has denied she is a gold digger by dating Kanye as he divorces Kim Kardashian, 41. She told fans on her Forbidden Fruits podcast: “People are like, Oh you only in it for the money. Honey, I have dated billionaires my entire adult life, lets keep it real!”

Looking at this you ask, how come she only dates billionaires?

Julia Fox is herself a millionaire, worth $30 million. If she were skint and poor then the argument would have held water. Wealthy folks have a tendency to marry each other these days. For example, multi-millionaire English singer Adele is currently romancing African-American sports agent Rich Paul, who is worth $120 million.

So?

Birds of a feather flock together. It is no longer the days where you married someone just to be kept “comfortable”.

However, in some parts of the world the dependency thing is still fashionable. Here we struggle and straggle financially. The beginning of 2022 still looks like a desert with no oasis. In Tanzania there is a Swahili idiom, “Mwanaume ni kitega uchumi”. (A guy means finances)

Mmh...how does this work?

The rich tend to visit and meet in certain places, and if you don’t or can’t afford that kind of environment then you don’t go there. Simple. You cannot go there. You will not afford being there and looking for kitega uchumi.

End of the story.

What about us in the middle...?

Come January and February (especially) most of us are checking bank balances. Counting pennies. You know when you scuttle around hidden corners of your house searching for any forgotten notes. ANY FORGOTTEN COINS.

Years ago I had a bit of extra cash and I decided to stick a couple of notes in a book. I forgot about it and months later, around January, I was out of pocket. During such moments, solace is playing my piano. Or reading. Haaa! Reading. Three or four books at a time.

I remembered that I had not finished a particular book. The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence, an English novelist of early 20th century.

Brilliant and still smashing, a hundred years later, published in 1928. The Complete Poems is a fine mix of themes. Good for brushing up your English too.

I was after a particular poem.

Reptile was written while D.H. Lawrence visited (or lived briefly) in Taormina, Italy. He had just woken up, and went to fetch water at a local stream.

The author saw this snake enjoying a sip.

“He lifted his head from his drinking as cattle do

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do

And flickered his two forked tongue from his lips and mused a moment...”

Note the details.

DH Lawrence had an exceptional eye as a writer. Add powerful variety of topics about nature, love and human emotion. His most known work about early 20th century European sexual repression, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was banned and only lifted out of the cage in 1960, some 40 years after his death in 1930.

Anyway.

Note.

Here the snake lifted its head “as cows do...” and also, the “two forked tongue” of the reptile.

I was once bitten by a snake (green mamba), and recognise the intense pain that follows the “two forked tongue” flicking before it stings you.

And on seeing the creature, the poet only thought of what?

D.H. Lawrence: “And voices in me said, if you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off

But I must confess how I liked him.”

The writer had this debate because as he said in the poem, the snake did not “bother” him but drank and left.

Nevertheless, D.H. Lawrence still picked up a stick and threw – missed, but regretted because there had been no purpose to harm the reptile. At the end he thought it was petty, killing creatures unnecessarily. This debate is in the poem and makes very interesting reading.

Kill or not kill?

But we are talking about money here. Money that makes us lust, plot murder, steal, lie, sell our bodies...

And therefore.

I was searching for the poem when lo and behold, there slept a bunch of sterling notes, stuck during good times.

They say money makes the world go around, and that afternoon a book made my Tuesday extra special.