On Saturdays the mall in our town holds an arts, crafts and home-bake fair. Other stalls sell olives and home squeezed olive oils, cheeses – usually delicious goat-milk cheeses, spice stalls, strawberries, mangoes and other exotic fruits, and nuts.

My regular chore

My regular Saturday morning chore is to buy the newspaper. I buy it for the crossword it features, not the New York Times kind, but an English cryptic crossword that I like doing. I have to weave through the throngs of shoppers from the foot of the escalator to the book store where the papers are sold. And therein lies a problem.

The nut counter

Halfway in this mad dash to get in and buy the paper as quickly as possible is a large counter dealing in nuts. What’s the problem? The sugared nuts. They have a piece of equipment that looks rather like a concrete mixer and into this goes almonds, peanuts, pecans, cashews, sugar and water. Out come the most delicious sugared nuts. “Don’t you dare!” said my wife the first time this kiosk opened for business.

Saturday

I was there on Saturday, as usual, fighting my way through the crowd when I spotted the nuts. I had money in my pocket for a change. Normally I carry only money for the newspaper when I come to the mall. I bought a bowl of mixed sugared nuts. “Do you want an explanation of how to store these so that they last?” asked the storekeeper. He looked at me and laughed, “You mean they won’t even last as far as the elevator up to your apartment!”

The sugared nuts

The sugared nuts are delicious. What’s more one cannot stop eating them until the bowl is empty. The sugared nuts are also expensive, a small bowl costing about $6. We don’t usually buy them although the salad maker in the family likes to sprinkle them on a green salad – “makes it much more interesting”. I buy them only when I have ‘spare’ money. I notice that the nuts have become a sort of indicator of our personal financial situation on Saturdays after a payday advance. If I am not feeling financially strapped, we buy and the buying acts as an on/off switch. Buy the nuts and everything’s fine. Things don’t feel so great – no nuts.

Economic indicators

Economic indicators are a subject all on their own and range from the ridiculous to the sophisticated. One of the best known is the Economist’s Big Mac index which tries to make the theory of exchange-rates easier to understand. It is based on MacDonald’s Big Mac hamburger which is sold in many countries of the world. The prices of the Big Mac in various countries are listed, converted into dollars, mixed with the earning power of the local currency, minced and spat out as a ‘purchasing power parity’, a direct comparison of currencies. My nut indicator is easier to understand – either I’m feeling rich or I’m not!

Cash Advance Loans