Cape Town - I have a friend whose brother is very rich. He works in finance, works on his tan, lives in Bantry Bay and buys his groceries from Giovanni’s.
When my friend, a lecturer, told her brother over coffee how tired she was and how much she needed a break, he said: “You should go on a skiing holiday to Switzerland. We went last year and it was really affordable.” My friend snorted cappuccino out of her nose. She and her family can barely afford to have an ice lolly in Muizenberg, let alone an ice adventure in St Moritz.
Sometimes, I do my grocery shopping in Constantia – mostly because the supermarket there seems to have fresher, shinier stuff, but also to mingle with people who smell nice and wear jodhpurs. It’s a dangerous business (not the jodhpurs or having to wait half an hour for a Porsche Cayenne to finally swing into a parking space), but the fact that when I’m strolling the aisles, pushing my trolley and humming along to Toto, I begin to believe that I, too, smell nice and have a horse called Clarissa and live in one of those houses that have lounge furniture on the veranda.
And then I shop accordingly. By the time I get home and have unpacked the olives and the salmon and the gold-encrusted crackers and the saffron-infused tea and the may-as-well-be-platinum case of Pinotage, I sink to the floor and weep and wonder if my car can run on wine.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to suddenly come into money. I once received a royalty cheque for R17.45 and was so excited I blew the entire amount on a packet of Fritos and a liquorice rope.
Ten years ago, a friend’s reclusive uncle died in England. He had led a humble life, riding his bicycle to his civil-servant job and eating pies on weekends. He was a bachelor and had no children, but it turned out he had a secret passion: Victorian pot lids – the ceramic tops of toothpaste and shaving-cream pots, typically featuring extravagant claims of the miracle products within. His will stated that the lids should be auctioned, with all proceeds split between my friend, his brother and their father.
The auction house said it was the most impressive collection of Victorian pot lids they had ever seen. My friend inherited R2-million. He bought a house. He sold the house. He then bought a boat and now lives in the Caribbean, where he doesn’t work too much, besides on his tan.
One of my tasks as an occasional copy editor is to check the spelling of people’s names, and what I’ve noticed recently is how interested the world seems in the marital status of politicians. Type their name into Google and the words “wife” or “husband” usually pop up in the auto-prompt, often followed by “salary”. This would either indicate that opposition parties are hard at work digging for dirt, or there are legions of people out there who want to dig for gold.
And this made me wonder about people who come into money through marriage, and what that would be like. Are there secret academies that teach newly wealthy spouses how to behave? Or online courses:
* How To Be Okay With Leaving A Lounge Suite Outside
* Parking A Massive Car – It’s Easier Than You Think
* Ordering The Best – One Man’s Gruelling Journey Through The Underbelly Of Oyster Bars.
And if you’ve married for money and not love, how many years do you have to spend pretending before you can settle down and blow all the dosh? Two? Five?
I’m not sure I’ll ever be rich. My reclusive, bachelor uncle barely owns a toothbrush let alone Victorian toothpaste lids; my husband spends any money he has on motorbikes and things that strap on to motorbikes and pointy things that attach to motorbikes; and I have chosen a profession that earns less than the average dog groomer. But it’s okay. I look like a pork sausage in jodhpurs, I prefer bakkies to Beemers and I once tried descending a snowy slope on a tea tray and ended up pulling the ligaments in my left knee.
And I’ve never understood scatter cushions.
However if, for some unfathomable reason, I do come into money, I’ll buy a catering-size pack of Fritos and a couple of Victorian pot lids. I’ll give money to friends to pay off their debts and send my lecturer friend on a two-month holiday to somewhere unpronounceable. Then, I’ll open a spaza shop in the Constantia mall, specialising in chicken giblets and polony, just to keep things interesting.
Cape Argus
* Helen Walne is an award-winning columnist and writer based in Cape Town.