My regular Saturday comment followed by this week’s blog and financial site links.

I missed doing the Weekend Review last Saturday due to being away for work, and then by Sunday I was coming down with flu. By Monday I was dying good and proper, as only a man with a cold can.

Health is the most precious thing in this life. A cliche I know — if you want to stitch it into one of those wall hangings old people used to hang above their beds, perhaps with a picture of a dozing dormouse, be my guest. It’s true.

I would give all my wealth for the guarantee of never being ill again (perhaps reluctantly compromising on some termination clause, such as a piano dropping on my head or a date with the proverbial bus).

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A friend of mine sometimes speculates about the size of the ‘Monevator Hoard’, as he almost calls it.

Over the years he’s noted I like to save a lot, and also my interest in the stock market. Putting two and two together, he gets millions.

I avoid talking about money and my portfolio in everyday life. Partly it’s because I’m a very private person, blogging notwithstanding.

It’s also because I live in London, one of the most moneyed cities in the world, where there’s thousands of wealthy folk who make any normal person’s savings look like loose change. (£500,000 bonus, anyone?)

But my friend does the same sort of work as me, and is roughly the same age – he wouldn’t expect me to have £5 million and my own man at Coutts.

I’m certain from what he’s implied though that he’d think the cash value of my investments very large, were I to tell him. He’d likely see me (maybe he already does see me) as a wealthy miser who should spend his mundanely-gotten gains on wine, women, and song – or at least the next round.

That assessment of our relative wealth would differ markedly from mine.

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Over on the far right of the bell curve are women with perfect curves and uniquely beautiful faces.

This was the founding premise of Perfect 10, a magazine focused on the most attractive females around.

Perfect 10s are rare. According to the standards of glamour photography – entirely aesthetic and youth-obsessed – almost no women are Perfect 10s.

• Age alone rules out nearly anyone over 25 or under 18.
• Of the 10% of women left, most would be considered overweight.
• We’re down then to a pool of perhaps 2% of the female population before we’ve even considered their winning smiles, breasts, or acne.
• The magazine actually found many of its beauties in Eastern Europe.

I’d even question whether the Perfect 10 dream is all that?

This isn’t the place to judge the morality of objectifying female beauty (for the record, I think it is objectify-able, but I’m completely clear about the consequences that women have to live with).

Rather, I’d suggest that even if most Perfect 10 readers could snag themselves one of these rare creatures, they’d find living with her a trial.

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