{"id":828,"date":"2004-02-01T10:14:54","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T14:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=828"},"modified":"2004-02-01T10:14:54","modified_gmt":"2004-02-01T14:14:54","slug":"fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the standards of the middle classes we are not rich at all but it is astonishing how well free trade lets us live. Last night I ate a plate of mussels for supper, and then some bread and cheese with a half bottle of Gevrey Chambertin, picked up in Totnes<\/a>. Then I set a fire in the living room, put some Liszt<\/a> on the CD player,and sat for a long time listening and watching with a small glass of brandy. When the music had finished and the fire was moribund I read a little from a second-hand Milton (a nicely bound book that had been a fifth-form prize for sight-reading at a girls’ school in 1935).<\/p>\n\n

I can’t see how any amount of money could have improved this experience.<\/p>\n\n


\nI know it is a very materialistic form of bliss; but it is astonishing what wonderful things we can get in the Western world, and for how little money. Apart from the fire — and I didn’t have to chop the wood — I suppose that all my pleasures cost me about £20, including the CD, <\/span>whose cost should be amortised for the rest of my life. A hundred years ago much of this would have been beyond anyone less than superlatively rich (as, on a global scale, I am).<\/p>\n\n

An Edwardian millionaire could have drunk better wine; his book might have been more beautifully bound, though hardly better printed. He would have missed the pleasure of setting his own fire; and to get a private performance of Liszt to that standard, he’d have had to have been a Wittgenstein, and got a relative to play.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the standards of the middle classes we are not rich at all but it is astonishing how well free trade lets us live. Last night I ate a plate of mussels for supper, and then some bread and cheese … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}