Work: What’s the big deal?
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, we have been told. But what about no work? Does it make Jill interesting or just plain lazy? Patrizia Reggiani, the 63-year-old former wife of the heir to the Gucci fortune, says she will never work — even if means freedom from a 26-year jail sentence which she is serving on charges of trying to get her husband murdered.
The jail authorities had thought they were offering a good and kindhearted bargain, but the lady — who had once thought a £400,000 maintenance allowance too meagre — turned them down because it involved getting a job.
Her compulsions are easy to understand. She has never worked for a day in her life and to expect her, or anybody for that matter, to suddenly learn this new skill at an advanced age is simply unfair. Aristocrats and the seriously rich can’t be expected to get a job like plebeians who have to toil to earn their daily bread and a bit of butter and jam. If you are to the manor born, with people waiting hand and foot to fulfil your every desire, even making a cup of tea for yourself becomes quite a chore.
Actually, working may be overrated. To join the rat race to earn some money which then gets frittered away in paying your EMIs is no way to spend a life. One recalls the wise words of Jerome K. Jerome, who had said a long time ago that he loved work, and could spend hours looking at it. He would have understood what Signora Reggiani meant.
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