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The Art of Affordable Indulgence

Writer's picture: Alex McQuibbanAlex McQuibban

Life is full of rituals, whether you like it or not. These rituals might include your daily commute, study sessions at the library, or pints with friends. Even if you do your best to avoid rituals, or at least not to actively pick them up, they end up resurfacing albeit in much more mundane, even depressing, forms. Brushing your teeth, getting out of bed, or, alternatively, not brushing your teeth and rotting in bed all day, become routines which colour your daily life, even if the colour they add is a drab shade of beige which you have tricked yourself into seeing as tan or cream so as to not feel worse about yourself. 


So if life is to be full of rituals, I think we may as well go for the more colourful ones. More specifically, I think we should do our best to take some time out of our week to embrace the ‘finer’ things in life. What exactly are the finer things? A surprisingly good answer to this question can be found on Reddit, of all places. User ‘superad’ answers: “Stupidly good red wine, cured meats, a perfectly ripe avocado, oysters, heated tiles in the bathroom, high thread count bathrobes, intimate sex with your favourite person, an amazing scotch, and easy access to the beach.” Though individual taste varies, it’s likely that at least one of those things resonates with you. Still, these pleasures do not come easily for everyone. As St Andrews students, many of us are guaranteed relatively easy access to the beach, cheap Sainsbury’s wine, and the varying-in-quality public bathrooms at the Union. But we cannot all afford to splurge on oysters and high thread count bathrobes. And, though a surprising amount of us do have sex, this – unsurprisingly – does not change the fact that the avocados at Tesco’s are hardly ever ripe. 


However, it is perfectly possible to embrace life’s finer things without having to endure life’s finer price tags. Allow me to supply an example from my own personal life which I think provides a general idea of how you might ritualise ‘fine-ness’ without plunging yourself into debt. When I lived in London, my (now former) flatmate Rasmus and I had what we dubbed a ‘wine night’ every couple of weeks: we would get a bottle of wine — always relatively cheap — which caught our eye. We would then theme the entire night around said bottle — for example, by buying ingredients to make a nice (though by no means expensive) meal to pair with it and playing music from the wine’s native region or which otherwise went with the wine’s ‘vibe’. One day it was a Catalan red served with lamb accompanied by Spanish Civil War era music — of the anarchist/Republican variety of course — served with a flag of the International Brigades in our eyeline. Another day it was a California white, to which we added a delicious — though, again, incredibly inexpensive — homemade fish pie, which we enjoyed to the sound of 70s and 80s rock. During the course of each meal, we caught each other up on our respective lives, reminisced on old memories, and even occasionally played a board game. At the end, we would post a long detailed review of the wine, ensuring to use as many jarringly pretentious terms à la “oaky finish,” “strong minerality,” and “notes of so and so.” Each review was also invariably capped off with something along the lines of, “The wine was no match for the amazing company of the always inimitable Rasmus/Alex.”


This is all to say that you should treat yourself to ‘fancy’ things; you should try to imitate an aesthetic once in a while even if you know you could never afford the real thing. The template I have given above is quite flexible, but the world is truly your oyster. Organise a boozy game night with friends, write poetry by candlelight, have a glass of (cheap) scotch or some tasty (though again cheap) cheese while listening to your favourite songs, and, as Reddit user ‘superad’ does well to suggest: have intimate sex with your favourite person.


Illustration by Holly Ward

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