Charidee

Between the door and the window you can see the piano I played Saturday night. It was a private party in a stately home just outside Wolverhampton. The building was amazing and the owner a multi-millionaire.

It was quite a culture shock seeing them sipping champers and chattering, especially after being with the pot-smoking hippies in Glastonbury the day before. Who, it seemed, had very little but had as much (if not more) fun.

And when you go to these moneyed places you start thinking about personal wealth. How it's impressive, but shouldn't be. Sometimes you think about your own position in life. What have I achieved? What am I worth?

Then I heard the news about the cyclone disaster, and you hear about how those people live and the poverty there. And just as my flat could fit into the lounge of the place I played Saturday, my life would be obscenely decadent to the average Burmese. I stood at the cheese counter last night wondering whether to buy a ball of mozzarella. And it was calories, not money, that was stopping me buy it.

So, how compassionate am I? Have I sent money to help their plight? No. And I've got some to send too. It's not like I'm living hand to mouth, but I like my savings. I like seeing that money in the bank.

Y'know, I wonder if I sent £100 over there, would it save someone's life? I could send my fee for playing Saturday night couldn't I? A symbolic, as well as charitable donation.

But I won't. Because I've earned that money myself, it's mine, and I've never met those people and 'till today, never even heard of where they live, and that may well be morally obscene, but that's the way it is.

I've been bought up believing that the way to glory lies with the accumulation of personal wealth. Yet I'm already in the top ten percent of worldly wealth by the fact I own a house and a car.

There's a donate button on google . . it would be painless for me to donate a tenner. But I could also buy a book or a CD with that tenner. .

A woman on the radio earlier, said she lived hand-to-mouth, yet last night was searching for something to sell so she could donate. I think that makes her a better person than me.

Anyway, I just re-read all what I'd written, and thought, "shit harv, you're a bit of a skinflint, send a tenner you mean old scrote". But would I be sending it out of compassion? Or just to make myself feel better? To prove to myself I'm an okay guy?

Sod it. I'll send a fiver then.