Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for November 16th, 2006

Now I bet that title has you wondering what exactly I am blabbering about today. Well last night I had a lovely night out at the National Arts Center, and got to see one of my favorite Story Tellers, Billy Connolly. His shows seem like a complete “train of thought” of stories about his friends and life, but I suspect it is not as “off the cuff” as he portrays it, but an amazing evening and the show’s title was “Too Old to Die Young“, and I’d highly recommend it, if he comes to your city.

Now, the title is an excellent part of his overall story, of which I am still not completely sure what story it was, but that is not the point. Billy talked about how his “lot” in life has changed from when he was a Welder in the Shipyards in Glasgow, but some things just never change. He catches himself “… listening like a welder …” sometimes, and then proceeded to tell a short story on an exact incident (or so he claims).

He walked into an upscale furniture store in London, and saw a saw carpet that looked just splendid. He went on for about 5 minutes about how well crafted this 1 meter squared carpet looked, I’ll spare you that. A salesperson came over and started a discussion about this carpet with Billy, and Mr. Connolly finally asked, “How much for this?”. Now he asked the question as Billy Connolly, entertainer and a man of means with a nice lifestyle, but when the salesperson said £12,000.00, he heard it as a Glasgow Shipyard Welder and said, “WHAT THE ….?!?!?” (and I won’t fill in all the expletives that went after that).

Now, that’s something those of us who have had a good change in life, and have got “comfortable” we should not forget our roots. If your inner cheap person, or welder says, “I am not paying that much for something like that!”, maybe you should listen to it!

Listen to Billy, and buy his DVD’s too, unless you don’t like swearing, then maybe not. –C8j