How much?

I usually park in that road - one hour gives me time to nip round, do all the bits I need to do, and head off. I came back, and there was the yellow and black plastic envelope fluttering under the windshield. I couldn't understand it, I hadn't been that long. I then read the signs on the street. In January, March, May, June, August and November, park on this side. All other months, parking prohibited. On the other side of the street, February, April... and so on. You get the picture - depending on what month it is, you park on this side or that. Just goes to show how long I'd gotten away with it.

£35, an expensive mistake, a cheap deal considering I'd always parked wherever I liked, or money lost down the drain, depends how you look at it. Either way, I think my money goes towards new library books - dream on, I say to myself, a bit like believing there's a heaven. Does money change in value depending on what we send it on? The concept of money is, to me, like gold - it can be micromillimeters thick, and sheet a building, can be rolled into a hairsbreadth tube, strong but soft, heavy and solid. Magic. Shines, never tarnishes, unlike money, which can be too easily tarnished. Who we accept money from, and for what, is a very personal thing.

To bring the personal into the public, putting a value on work, and one's own work - in my case, artwork, can be difficult. It's not regulated by the FSA but there are market parameters, and all the basic considerations like materials and overheads, simple enough to work out, but there's that elusive, mystical property that artwork can have, but so much of it doesn't. That's where a conveyor or purveyor - or curator - and in the commercial context - gallerist - steps in and tells you where to put your money after you've been told why. And if you still put your cash on the table, we all know that investment is something that takes a commitment to knowledgeability, taste, style and impartiality, and to trust your gallerist.. well.

There is regular conversation about selling work - how to? How much? I can understand only too well Saatchi trawling the Degree shows, and looking for himself, trusting in his own instinct - and the process is fun, and addictive, and the work is cheap as chips, because it's student stuff - totally and utterly undervalued, mostly because a shortsighted educational establishment quite often doesn't uphold it's own value - education is for life, and the investment they make in their graduates doesn't always reflect back well if it's been mismanaged. Either way, new graduates are churned out like hot cross buns - fluffy, lightly spiced, straight out of the Research and Development hothouse. That's what Universities are good at - stretching the capability, belief and capacity of an individual, to take steps beyond where they themselves thought they could go. Provided they have the right ingredients in the first place, of course. Pigs ear and silk purse, they lament.

The University of Life teaches very different lessons: how to lose your shirt over a bad deal, underestimating time to produce work, dealing with from difficult clients, internet business banking, and how to reorder paperwork in the most inefficient and time consuming way, so that it would have been more effective to send a toilet roll as your tax return. Deep Joy. The question is, where is that lesson to be learned? How to value and hence put a price on one's own work? Universities wash their hands, and as soon as you're out the door, it's pain or pleasure, or quite often both. The answer for me is in myself. I reckon I have a fair idea of my own value, and what I produce. Question is, does the rest of the world agree? And that's only the start of another conversation.