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The Vulgar Subject of Money First off, a good new year to everyone. One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2017, I drove from Cambridge to Loughton in Essex. I had volunteered to be a judge in an informal Taekwondo poomsae competition between our club in Cambridge and the Loughton Club led by Master Chan Sau. Poomsae refers to patterns of defence and attack techniques, which we learn by heart and perform in competition and in belt gradings. In Japanese martial arts, these patterns are called kata. However, this story is not about martial arts. On this beautiful summer’s day, I set the car’s satnav for the postcode of the sports centre in Loughton in which the competition was to take place, as I had only a vague idea of the geography of that area of Essex on the north-east edge of London. The satnav directed me along conventional routes towards east London, but as we neared our destination, it took me along meandering little roads through Epping Forest (very pretty on this su...