In their excellent song “A day in space”, Ballboy makes the case for spending a windfall million quid on a day in space:
And then I say
“What better place could you go to than space?
What’s a better holiday than that?
Think about lying there in your 100’s,
110 or whatever,
looking back on your life and thinking, well,
what did I actually do?
What did I actually achieve?
Oh, yeah, I saw the pyramids.
Big deal.
You can apparently see those from space anyway.
You see all the rest of the blue and green globe
twisting and turning below you.
You can see the sun lighting up the moon,
feel the stars shining down upon your back.
You don’t get that in Egypt,
and you don’t get that in the pyramids,
and you don’t get that by pissing away your million pounds
on something everyone else can do
if they save up long enough.
If presented with a £1M, I’m pretty sure we’d do the safe thing, socking most of it away to ensure Sub-Evil Boy‘s college education and our happy (and perhaps early) retirement. I suspect we would travel a lot more, but we’d be much more likely to spend extended periods in Florence than a day in space. And then there’s be the neat opportunities for charitable giving, as well as nifty consumer electronics to feed WeatherGirl‘s habit (and help prop up Our Fearless Leader’s U.S. economy).
If I was totally unattached, the idea of a day in space would probably sound more appealing. I’m not, though, and it would have to be a family thing (which is a cool thing to look back on when I’m 110). For now, I think family time works better on the surface than in space. The possibilities of (incredibly expensive) “space tourism” are becoming sufficiently real, though, that the government is now starting the regulatory wheels, leading to the predictable clash with those who wish to profit from people’s desire to see “the blue and green globe twisting and turning below”.
So what would you do with a £1M?
Unfortunately for you, a million won’t get you into space. But don’t forget about your friends, don’t be selfish with it, ask your friends what they want to do, do something with it that you will remember when your old and you will say, that was the best thing I could have done with that money.
I guess you can think of a million pounds here as “A lot more money than I’m likely to have anytime soon” :-). I agree with your sentiment, though – thanks.