Value

After having a couple of cool mojitos at the chiringuito on the beach the other night, I came home feeling quite tranquilo (no that's not Spainsh for wasted, bladdered or even merry, well just a slight merry buzz maybe). It was a school night so I managed to resist the temptation of sitting there until the early hours sucking on a straw while using it to mash up the lime, sugar and mint to get the last dregs out of every glass before promptly ordering another. When I'm like that I don't count how many I had, because I just go with the flow. It isn't until I get up that I realise how many I've had as the legs often take a moment to 'adjust'.

So feeling perfectly in control of myself I thought I would iron a shirt for work the next day, to save me doing it in the usual morning rush that I would prefer to dedicate to my breakfast. Because breakfast is King in my house, peeps. It was as I was ironing each perfect crease (yes my mum taught me to iron when I was 12; I hated her for it at the time but it served me well and I can proclaim to be a shit-hot ironer - this my blog so I'll big myself here thanks) that I realised there was no more water left in it to steam my way through the sleeves (maybe the mojitos had taken just a little effect after all) and so I took it to the sink and started filling it. It was at this point my gaze fell on the iron it self.

In every place I have laid my hat I have bought myself a new iron. A bit of an essential tool, at least if you want to avoid going to work looking like a student who has just left home for the first time. Sincing coming to Spain, I still haven't brought all my stuff over from Italy, including the iron. Soon I need to go and pick up some stuff I need, I think I have a very distinct feeling I will be back there, maybe that's why I haven't taken some things with me.

But the clothes iron isn't one of those essentials to pick up. By now I could open a market stall selling clothes iron. "Bargain, ladies, come on now, 3 for a tenner!" Well, here, I bought a new one from Carrefour supermarket and it cost me €10. It's just a pretty normal looking bog-standard iron, nothing fancy, just fill it up, let it steam and do your stuff. Anyone who knows how to iron doesn't need anything more fancy or expensive.

As I went back to the shirt sleeves, I realised that I had also spent €10 too that evening on 2 mojitos. Thing is, as much as I enjoyed them, they were gone in an hour between chatting and toe tapping to the evening's tunes on offer. It was a good evening, €10 well spent. But were they as well spent as the €10 on that iron?

I mean, I use that iron every day. It does it's job, it serves it's purpose more than well, but it only cost €10. Think about the factory it was made in, all the components and the drawing-board design, and the labour and packaging before it sits on the shop shelf. Then think of the mojito. From my bartending days, I can make a pretty damn fine mojito, people used to come to me at the bar because they knew they could rely on me to whip one up in the right way.

But that's it, I would literally 'whip one up'. No drawing board, no factory assembly, in about two to three minutes. Albeit, it looks finer presented on the bar than an iron on the shop shelf, but with two of them I could have bought a clothes iron. And that wouldn't be gone in an hour. It would be there for months, there for me and my shirts. By the way, top ten public sin: Ironing creases in jeans. Jailable offence.

So as you see I have often thought about value. Value for money, value for you time. Sometimes it may be how to just balance everything in our day. Sometimes it might just be the choices we make and how we place them. Maybe wise old Albert was right when he said: "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value". And he was a pretty respected guy at the end of it all, as well as being the only person who could have a crazy white haircut and still hold down a pretty important day job.