Top-Class No. 1 Swami Fred. Get a life!

I have decided to become a Guru.

Wikipedia (who know about these things) define ‘guru’ as ‘a Sanskrit term that connotes someone who is a teacher, guide or master of certain knowledge’

Well, I can do that.

Here is my problem.  All my life I have fairly effectively avoided the road to untold riches – not deliberately, and not, I like to think, for lack of talent; but because there were so many attractive diversions on the way.   Do I regret that?  I do not.  Am I the richer for life’s experiences?  Yes, I am.

Can you see where this is going?

In my ‘useful’ years I often wanted, but never needed money.   I got by.  Now that I am older and in my useless years, I want some.   I need some.   If I’m going to put up with all this other shit, illnesses and incapacities and failing this and falling that, I want to be rich.  And I want to be venerated.  I really do.

Now as far as I can see there are five roads to untold wealth.

I could have become a Captain of Industry.   At various stages of my life, I believe I tried this.  I always relished the idea of turning the ship around (like the metaphor?), being rewarded with a huge bonus, then retiring to a far country before the flaws in my grand plan were discovered and my chickens (a metaphor’s not a metaphor until it’s mixed) came home to roost.

I could have been a footballer, married a ‘personality’ and misbehaved at parties.  Obvious difficulty?  I can’t play football – never could.

I could have been a Consultant.  I have spent the greatest part of my life under the misapprehension that a Consultant is an acknowledged expert in his field.  Untrue.  A Consultant just has to make a few of the ‘right people’ believe he is an expert in his field.  The rest is down to pure luck.

So perhaps the Great Adventurer was more my thing?  Well, no.  Not really.  I could never see myself toughing it out in the unexplored jungle – all that dampness, all those bugs, and sleeping in a tent with an uninvited python: or in the freezing arctic gale, gamboling gaily on an ice flow with a playful polar bear.  Sadly, adventure for me is diving perilously into the unknown aisles of Sainsbury’s in search of a grail of sugar.  And even then, I wouldn’t consider it on a Saturday.  I’d want to be home for the weekend – definitely.

Might I have been a Distinguished Surgeon?  Leaving to one side my shaky hands, my very short temper and my even shorter attention span, could I have succeeded in the theatre of complex heart surgery, stooped above an inert, widely opened patient for many hours with a vast array of cutlery and an attentive crew at my every beck and call?  “Nurse, could you just hang onto these forceps for a minute?  I have to nip to the bathroom.”  Wouldn’t work, would it?

I could have been a Best Selling Author? No, scrap that one.

So, since I am too old for any other option, I am adopting a late career move in which my age is a positive advantage.  And I shall be distributing pearls of wisdom across the astral plane for you all to pluck and ingest at a bargain introductory offer price of $50.00 (£35 Sterling) per life-changing insight – all investments at this time to go towards the construction of my Mountaintop Retreat in West Yorkshire (easily reachable from several international airports and accessible from major cities, Manchester and Leeds).

Please feel free to come and help me build my temple to wisdom.  Bring money.