Rosie Millard: Thrifty Living

Contrary to popular belief, London can be a fabulously cheap city. Compared to our native holiday resorts, that is. After two weeks in Suffolk, aka Mini Boden land, or Cornwall (ditto, with a splash of Laura Ashley), or the Scottish Highlands (ditto, with a spot of Brora), your bank account might very well be on its knees. I came back from Hampstead-on-Sea, sorry, Southwold, where beach huts (no running water, one room) are now changing hands for £100,000, and ran around Islington practically crying with joy at the relative cheapness of it all.

The problem, or one of the problems, with my attitude to money, is that it is travel-sensitive. Meaning that I am hopelessly affected by the values of where I happen to be in the world. If this is somewhere fabulously cheap, I might come back with some of my "holiday money" still sitting in my purse.

At a place like Southwold, however, it works the other way. Because the shops sell pots of jam for £4.50 and because I am holidaying alongside people like Emma Freud, the comfortable wealth of everyone else starts encouraging me, after a day or so, to think that I am in the same fiscal boat as they are. This phenomenon is known as the virus of virtual wealth. It is as if their groaning bank accounts have affected mine. Their notion of cash flow has floated over to my Switch card rather like the travelling spores of a dandelion.

I find myself visiting the cash point on a daily, even twice-daily basis. Happily paying £2 for a piece of plastic to fit into a Croc shoe. Coughing up £15 for a cream tea. I nearly bought a tiny, metal cake-stand for £28. I know, ludicrous. But once you are in the domain of £100,000 beach huts and £15 cream teas, unless you are very strong-willed, I promise, you too will end up wanting to fill your home with suitably chi-chi artefacts, like cake stands, and not batting an eyelid at the price. Having such a porous financial sensibility is of course highly treacherous. I once blew an entire ISA holidaying in the world's most luxurious beach resort, namely the Hamptons. My bank account took about a year to recover.

Anyway, there I am, standing in a trinket shop in Southwold, wondering whether to buy this £28 cake-stand, or maybe even a brace of them, when the youngest of the junior Millards suddenly pipes up. "Potty training!" he yells. This early warning system gives about a minute's grace before all hell breaks loose. I grab him, stuff him under my arm and charge back to our house. In the relatively safe domain of the bathroom, I shake off my cake-stand madness, and return to the holiday's major activities – making blackberry and apple jam – and trying to encourage the other three children to stop watching The Rescuers, and walk the dog.

Once back in London, I celebrate a return to financial normality with a quick walk around my local Woolworth's, where I buy five pairs of sport socks for £2 and a protractor for 49p. Wonderful things, protractors. The next day, we decide to mark the miracle of the sun shining with a trip to Columbia Road flower market, which is on a different financial planet to Southwold, being a market organised by loud Cockneys. It is very good value. Twenty roses for a fiver, 10 allium bulbs for a fiver. Box of herbs, a fiver. Turn up at around noon, and the prices start to tumble. Lemon tree, a fiver. Scots pine, a fiver. "How about this weeping willow?" says Mr Millard, pointing to a large tree in a box. Don't tell me. A fiver? Actually, no. This one was strangely pricey. A tenner.

We round the corner and chance upon a bric-a-brac store. I remember my now-dormant desire. "They might have cake stands here," I whisper. We stand before a stall which has an enthusiastic line in old Oxo tins and enamel jugs. And there, on the floor, under the trestle table, is a little cake stand! With two glass plates, etched with roses, and a delicate golden hooped trellis to hold the entire fragile construction, which rests on four little rubber feet. Mine, for £8. The stall-holder wraps it up for me and hands it over. "Where did you get this simply fabulous cake stand?" I burble. "Car-boot sale," she replies. Where no doubt she picked it up for about £2. What a thought. Next year, maybe we could take our annual summer holiday beside a car-boot sale. It could have the most bracing effect on me.

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