It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the cost of living seemed to take legs and run. I’d guess perhaps five years ago as the economy started to pick up again after the disaster of 2001. But it’s in the last couple of years that things really began to get out of hand, primarily because of the shocking cost of fuel in all its forms. There are people who’re fond of complaining about the high cost of alcohol, or even -- shock, horror -- that the price of cigarettes has finally started to rise, but if you’re British you’ll be no stranger to “sin taxes” and frankly those are items we can live without. My concern is with the price of the things none of us can avoid having to pay for, by which I’m thinking primarily of gas, electricity, wood, coal and gasoline (whether directly if you’re a car owner or indirectly if you’re everybody else). Nor can we skirt round the rising cost of many basic foodstuffs. Milk, meat, even bread, all cost considerably more than they did two years ago, and these are the eating-at-home choices, not the luxurious price of dining out.But then sometimes it occurs to me that when I complain about the rising cost of living, I’m not necessarily comparing like with like. When I first came to live in Göreme, for example, I didn’t have a fridge, let alone a washing machine or turbo-oven. At that time there was no Digitürk to soak up subscriptions, nor yet any ADSL Internet to pay for. None of us had mobile phones (although landline costs are one of the few things which seem to have come down in price recently). Homing in more specifically on my own circumstances, I had only one cat to feed on expensive cat food then rather than the 10 I’ve saddled myself with now, and the absence of appropriate veterinary facilities, while unfortunate, also meant an equivalent absence of expense.
So some of what I perceive as the higher cost of living is really about having a higher standard of living, which inevitably needs more money to sustain it. The obvious answer, then, is to revert immediately to the traditional lifestyle. Be gone, costly white goods and expensive entertainment devices! Bye-bye pesto and pasta, hello baked potatoes sprinkled with salt straight from the oven! Welcome back, wood-and-coal-burning stove, regardless of all the dust and upheaval!
But of course that’s a fantasy. It was one thing living the simple life when everyone else was in the same boat, quite another to readopt a lifestyle everyone around me has jettisoned. Besides, there’s no getting away from those oppressive winter fuel bills unless I up and move to the coast immediately. So hold that reservation for dinner with all the trimmings please. I really can’t afford it after all.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
