Living for now is best investment
IN 1992 Peter Robinson bought an 18-year-old bottle of Macallan single malt when his son Matthew was born. He went on to buy him a bottle of the whisky every year. It wasn’t for drinking but as an investment. Matthew said: “I was under strict instructions never, never to open them. them.”
He d didn’t. His father spent £5,0 £5,000 on these birthday pre presents and the collection is now worth £40,000. M Matthew intends to put the money from the sale of the whisky towards a deposit on a house.
How nice for him, though it’s such a strange i idea – buying booze as an in investment that’s never to be drunk, but simply sold on to t others who won’t drink it eithe either.
Yet I do admire people who have the foresight to do such things for their children, to lay down pipes of port (whatever they are), to put their name down for membership of the MCC or even keep all the baby clothes folded in scented tissue.
I simply bought mine any old birthday/ Christmas presents that, with the exception of some books, must now be in landfill. Though I think perhaps the Lego was passed on to someone.
The word “curate” is much over-used but some people chronicle and plan their lives and those of their children in a systematic manner that I find impressive and makes me despair that I never managed it.
I have a battered box of memorabilia in the back of a cupboard but it’s hardly a full record and, when all’s said and done, we only have one life to live so perhaps I should have been more organised both in terms of what I did for my family and what I kept for posterity.
When I watch Antiques Roadshow and see someone turning up with a ticket to a Beatles concert I wonder why on earth I didn’t keep mine. At the very least it would be something to show to my grandchildren, even if the sale of it wouldn’t help them buy a house.
Or have we become prisoners of nostalgia in a way that previous generations were not? We are awash with ephemera, recordings, photographs. Though letters – once the most vivid way to access the past – are now a dying art because of emails and texts. Mind you, I had a nice letter from Jilly Cooper once but I lost that too.
There are now companies which will help you write your autobiography and present it to you in a smartly-bound volume “to be shared by generations to come”. It’s a charming idea I suppose – though it’s a bit like turning yourself into a museum.
So a part of me is envious of all these carefully recorded lives and planned investments for the future. But there’s also the if-in-doubt-sling-it-out part of me which thinks you have to live for the present and not find your reality in your past.
And, yeah, drink the damn whisky.