It seems surreal, but I have just crossed the equator from the North Atlantic to the South Atlantic. I seem to be in one of those deserted parts of the ocean, so far from the shipping lanes that the last time the AIS spotted anyone else was a tanker four days ago at a range of 10.8miles.

And yet I am up to speed with the Budget, the Ukraine deals (both of them) and all the guff on Facebook – and it is after reading a friend’s reaction to the budget that I have been sitting out in the cockpit in the sun with the Kindle unopened on my knee, watching the water go past in a welter of foam and thinking about what one particular friend has posted.

She has taken issue with Rachael Reeves’ assertion that we need more people who ‘take risks’ and ‘back an idea with their savings’ to become ‘wealth creators’.

My friend says the idea that anyone can become an entrepreneur is a fairytale: You need access to money, the right connections – you need to know how to ‘play the system’ – and the lack of morals to do it.

I’m not so sure that’s true.

In 2005, I had no job and, at the age of 50, it was quite clear I was not going to get another one. Somebody offered me an opportunity that at first glance seemed to be one of those ‘dodgy schemes’. But the total investment was £199 and, since I had nothing else, I thought it worth the risk.

The deal was that I would have to do something I wouldn’t necessarily want to do (but then, as they say, if you work at something you enjoy, it’s not really work.)

I didn’t enjoy this – but I did work at it and eventually grew comfortable with it. At any rate, it was worth putting up with it for the money.

I have just looked up the total they have paid me over the ensuing 20 years. It averages out at £27,964 a year.

I will admit that there are many people who earn more than that – but, by the same token, there are many who earn less and would give anything for that kind of security. Because this was not a wage that would stop being paid if I stopped working. This was what they called a ‘residual income’. Indeed, I stopped working at it full-time in 2016, and now I hardly touch it – although I still get paid every month.

I admit I was lucky. I had no alternative: I had to give it my all from the word go (most people start part-time). I had to risk £199, which I could ill afford (now it’s only a tenner). In a lifetime of sometimes questionable decisions, it remains one thing I got absolutely right, and I am intensely proud of it.

I didn’t need ‘access to money’ or the ‘right connections’ or any of that. Just hard work.

That’s fair, isn’t it?