Real Life | 20 June 2009

I’m a sucker for insurance. If you are naturally suspicious and inclined to pessimism then insurance is a drug you have no control over. You are either fantasising about how you can get more of it, or else desperately trying to make do with less of it. No matter how you adjust the dosage you can never get it right.

If you are also superstitious there is an added dimension. I’m not only hooked on the insurances I have, I’m hooked on not having the insurances I don’t. For example, I did not take out a pet plan when the vet suggested it, so now the cat and rabbit must remain uncovered forever. This is because I have since spent thousands on vet bills so am committed to making my non-insurance strategy work by not adding to the expense by also taking out insurance. This is madness and will never work. But I cannot turn back. The same rule applies to insurances I have and want to cancel. There is no way to do this. Cancelling insurance is simply opening the door to disasters.

It all adds up to non-stop torment. And yet insurance is supposed to be peace of mind, according to my boyfriend, who, as coincidence would have it, is in something called re-insurance. I think this means that when you take out an insurance policy the company who has insured you goes off and buys insurance from someone else to insure them for insuring you. As far as I can make out the chain goes on forever, or at least until the risk is spread so wide that when you do actually crash your car a staggering array of companies with assets bigger than most South American countries will be involved in coughing up the money for the repairs.