John Duffield

"Dear Carlos Slim"

My Mother believed everything she was told. The credibility of the source was almost immaterial, allowing her the freedom to cheerfully accept, store, and carefully curate for future repetition, all of the wisdom she was offered. She was a product typical of her generation, where elders were respected and their axioms solemnly adopted, fixed like stars in her firmament of personal opinion. "When it's gone, it's gone", she would gravely declare, whenever my hard-won pocket money was accorded the light of day. In the frequent absence of even those meagre resources, she would lovingly attempt to assuage my callow chagrin, by helpfully noting "well at least you can't spend what you don’t have". Conversely, the hopeful offering "If you don't ask.." was made all the more powerful by its truncation, subliminally obliging me to complete the idiom, "...you don't get." inevitably planting seeds of hope and possibility in my soft, fertile head. With that in mind, I decided to drop a brief line to the richest man in the world.