I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but there comes a time in the month of the dedicated Down and Outer when you realise you only have about £50 left in your bank account, and rather too many days until the next payday for your liking. You are also aware that because of various subscriptions that you have completely forgotten about, more stuff is going to keep draining your account. And unless thou gettest thee to a cashpoint in a hurry, that £50 is going to go on a subscription to the New Yorker, which you have looked at maybe twice in the last year, and then forgotten about, because it’s no good any more (I mean, even its cartoons are terrible these days).
Thus, I went down to the cashpoint next to the Waitrose. There was a man in front of me and I noticed he was taking an unusually long time. I hoped he wasn’t going to take too long, so I had a little peek over his shoulder to see what the hold-up was, and saw his finger hovering over the option that says, “Do you want to see your bank balance before you proceed?”
I know that hovering very well. On the one hand, you do really need to know what your bank balance is. On the other hand, finding out what it is is rarely an occasion of joy. So I felt sorry for the man in front of me, and didn’t go tut or in any way signal impatience.
The man did his business and walked off. Only he hadn’t quite done his business: he had left a bundle of cash in the machine. I pulled it out. I didn’t count it but it was a thick wad: I’d say about £300. Which, on that day of the week, would have been a life-changing sum for me. Anyway, I didn’t count it because I started running after the man and shouting “Oy!”. I thought of saying “Mate!” instead, but I didn’t, because a) I’m too middle class and b) he looked foreign and might not understand the term or, worse, take it literally, and think that I was trying to become his friend.
He was walking away slowly, as if in a daze, but it took another pedestrian to get his attention and point him towards me.
“You left your money in the machine,” I said, and handed it to him. He looked puzzled, as if it wasn’t his, but he took it in the end, and then walked off.
“Huh,” said the pedestrian, a greybeard like myself. “No ‘thank you’.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “he looked a bit out of it. I mean he must have been, leaving a wodge of cash in the machine like that.”
“What are you going to do, eh?” said the pedestrian. “You can’t just take someone else’s money.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I like being able to look myself in the eye when I look in the mirror.”
And that’s more or less the whole story. What I have found remarkable, though, was the speed with which I chased after the absent-minded one: if the thought had occurred to me to hang on to the money, it was over before I had even registered it. It didn’t even occur to me until the next day that I could have peeled off a £20 note as a kind of commission. But even the thought of doing that makes me feel a bit ill.
Anyway, I got my own £50 out and went into Waitrose to do some shopping. The last time I was there their Grant Burge South Australian Shiraz was on offer at a very reasonable £7 per bottle. But every so often the ’Trose pulls one of those stunts where you get 25 per cent off any wine you buy, as long as you buy six bottles. And although it was technically possible for me to blow the whole £50 on six bottles of wine, this wouldn’t leave me with enough money to buy food and, believe it or not, I don’t just subsist on alcohol alone. I like to take solids as well from time to time.
I thought again of my earlier good deed. In cartoons, my kind of situation is usually represented by a thought bubble with a stack of banknotes with “£” (or “$”) printed on it, but with fluttering wings and lines depicting motion away from the observer. I wondered whether there might be some kind of karmic gift in the offing, a little shift in the balance of the universe when it says, “You know what? That Lezard’s not too bad, really. Let’s give him a break.”
Well, as of time of writing, no such break has manifested itself, unless it has done so invisibly. Maybe there was a piano that was about to drop on my head from above but now hasn’t. Maybe I was meant to be on the train that derailed near Lewes last month. Maybe the fact that I’m alive and well enough to type these words is all the blessing I need.
I managed to eke out my £50 over four days. In fact, I still have £16 of it left, enough to buy a bottle of Famous Grouse. Although, as this sum contains a humiliating amount of small change, I think I shall wait until I am paid. Buying strong liquor with a trouserful of 20p bits is never a good look. Follow me for more tips on how to survive on a meagre budget. But at least I have a relatively clear coscience, which is beyond price. Maybe I have been paid. I just don’t feel like checking my balance yet.
[Further reading: I couldn’t master the colander so I missed most of the eclipse]
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This article appears in the 02 Sep 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Meet Generation Screwed
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Subscribe here to commentI did the same when I was about 12 years old. I found a £1 note on the street in Luton and then saw a young lad a few years younger than me frantically looking for something. I asked him what was it he had lost and he told me it was a pound note. I returned it to him and he looked so relieved. Anyway I told my uncle and cousin about it and the cousin who was a bit if a tearaway said I should have put the pound note in my pocket. My uncle gave me a ten bob note. I ended up in the middle class and my cousin ended up in prison so maybe there is a God?