Double bill - how to make a fortune and the answer to the meaning of life

How to make a fortune?

Set up an estate agency in London which isn't absolute total and complete bollocks. Taking my recent flat purchase for example, the sellers paid their solicitor about £450 for doing the conveyancing - quite a lot of work, done reasonably competently, and the solicitor takes responsibility for it for years to come because they can be sued for negligence if they cocked up etc. The estate agent, on the other hand, got over 3 grand for putting a (technically rather poor) photo of the flat in their window and failing to turn up to show me round on the first attempt. They also lost the phone number of someone who had made a higher offer for the flat - good for me, but not exactly professional! Once the flat was sold, no further liability for the estate agent - they can't be sued for cocking anything up because they never did anything for their 3 grand in the first place! There's got to be an easier life than this, and that is it.

Ah yes, and the answer to the meaning of life. Why are we here?

As a junior solicitor, one of the many unsatisfactory and frankly rather tedious things about everyday life at work is having to listen to people uttering such cringe-worthy bollocks as "touch base", "best practice" and "put this one to bed". Ironically, it is one of these spine-tinglingly irritating instances of subversion of the English language that made me realise the answer to the question "why are we here?"

The phrase is "add value". And that's what we're here to do. At work it's wank, of course, because all you're doing is charging clients a whole wodge of dosh for doing something which they don't really give a shit about - nobody's really adding any value to anything. But outside of work, what people try to do is improve things - make friends out of strangers, make a family out of nothing, make a home - generally turn chaos into order and make the world a better place... or add value.