MIKE SENKER – WHY IS EVERYTHING SO EXPENSIVE

Why is everything so expensive?

Why is everything so expensive these days? I saw a book the other day called ‘How to find happiness without money’- it cost €20! I have grey hair and was advised to use a special shampoo. I looked it up on line and it was £30 a bottle. Are they mad? My first mortgage was less than that a month and I struggled to pay that!  Of course you don’t have to pay that much. You can go down the supermarket and get a bottle for a couple of euros but I think there is just a big keg somewhere and they use the same stuff for shampoo, body wash, dishwashing, carpet cleaning, car wash and flea shampoo for dogs!

I was in the airport the other day and had a cheese and tomato baguette which is just a poncey name for a big roll.  It was £6.50! I’ve seen more cheese on a mouse trap and the slice of tomato looked like it had been shaved off and was cleverly hanging out the side to make it look full. £3 for a bottle of water! It’s just a liberty. But it’s a captive audience so we pay it. I remember years ago I was in Dallas and wanted to go out for a steak so I asked the concierge where a good place to go was.  “Do you want a $50 steak or a $100 steak?” he asked. “What’s the difference?” I enquired.  “$50”, he said, “the steak’s the same but one place has carpet on the floor the other sawdust”. We went with the sawdust! Get my point?

It’s the same here in Spain. I went to a restaurant with some mates and was told it was nouveau cuisine. Not having a clue what that meant at the time, as this was a few years ago, I ordered something with prawns as a starter and up came a lettuce leaf with a prawn on it. I sort of treated it a bit like testing the wine. By the time the waiter had served the other three people I looked up and said, “Very nice, I’ll have a whole portion please”.  “That was a whole portion sir”. “Err, no I don’t think so and definitely not at €25 a pop”. Needless to say to say it went downhill from there. The bill came, it was a few hundred euros and I was starving. I told them, in no uncertain terms what I thought of them, and told them there was no way their place would last.  Sure enough three months later it was gone and now is a very successful ‘eat as much as you can’ wok place. Banged out every night!

Many of our readers have commented on the fact that they are missing the Grumpy Old Man articles that have been part of EWN for so many years.

Unfortunately, Mike Senker hasn’t been very well of late and therefore had to stop writing for a while although he has promised that he is still quite grumpy and will submit new articles as and when he can.

In the meantime, we have dusted off some of his always amusing observations from past issues for your entertainment.