I’ll take my house over his, any day
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr doesn’t look much like Santa but, by golly, he (or at least one of his elves at The New York Times) has delivered a sackful of egalitarian yuletide cheer to my tiny house just in time for Christmas.
Sulzberger is chairman of The New York Times Company, and this week his newspaper published an expose about the owner of the world’s most expensive house. Hint: it’s not me.
The Chateau Louis XIV, a contemporary mansion built in the style of the palace at Versailles, is worth at least US$300,000,000. In 2015, it was sold to a mystery buyer whose privacy was protected by myriad shell companies but, after a bit of newshound digging, The New York Times has confirmed it’s none other than Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The prince’s swanky abode, set on a 23-hectare estate west of Paris, has all the mod-cons, including a cinema, wine cellar and glass-bottomed moat that affords house guests underwater views of koi carp swimming past their lounge chairs. The garden is pretty posh too, with a labyrinth maze, formal avenues of manicured topiary and gold-leafed fountains that can be controlled by iPhone.
Big deal. I live in a house that, by Auckland standards, is modest. (Translation: it’s valued at less than $1million, despite having a big backyard, by Auckland standards, of 22ha.)
My house, at 70 square metres, is no castle, but guess what? Like the Saudi Crown Prince, we have new LED Christmas lights we bought from The Warehouse that can be turned on and off with an iPhone app. Every time I make them twinkle at the touch of a button, I suddenly feel regal and fairygodmotherly.
One of the major advantages of living in a tiny house is it only takes a single strand of fairy lights to make it suddenly look a lot like Christmas. Less advantageous is the fact that I haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of accommodating a decent-sized Christmas tree downstairs. Indeed, to fit our tree in, I first had to move the rubbish bin out.
The other complication is that, as a green-fingered dendrophiliac, I can’t bear to decapitate a perfectly good Pinus radiata every year, so this year I’ve lugged a tidy potted conifer into the corner of our kitchen.
The conifer in question, Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’, has a naturally pyramidal form. I potted it up this time last year and – hallelujah! – it’s still alive, despite being neglected for 355 days of the year. That’s what I call a Christmas miracle.
Decorating the tree was much more fun this year than last, because even though my 6-year-old son Lucas declared that he’d rather play Minecraft than join his mother for some family bonding over a box of tatty tinsel, my 4-year-old son Lachie got right into the spirit of the occasion. For about 10 minutes.
Having decided on an Instagramworthy, Martha Stewart-sanctioned colour scheme of white and rose gold, I’d already shelled out the princely sum of $13 for shiny baubles (the kids took a sledgehammer to last year’s lot). Lachie, however, was determined that our tree would be more Liberace than Scandi in style and set about tarting up its needled branches with clashing strands of red, yellow, green, blue and turquoise tinsel. I quickly realised that there was no point in objecting on the grounds of good taste. He’s only four. He can’t even read Hairy Maclary, let alone Architectural Digest.
After he’d finished trussing the tree up like a rolled roast, he admired his handiwork. ‘‘It looks good, Mum. Santa’s going to be impressed when he puts all the presents under it.’’ Then he paused and asked, ‘‘would you like to have a feminine Christmas?’’
Fat chance. In our family, I’m outnumbered three to one by testosterone. Rather than get me perfume or lacy undies for Christmas, my husband has bought me a STIHL KombiSystem mini-cultivator attachment that converts our weedeater into a saw-bladed rotary hoe.
‘‘A feminine Christmas?’’ I asked my son. ‘‘What on earth is the thing of which you speak?’’
‘‘Here,’’ he replied, and handed me the last strand of tinsel – in a fetching shade of girly pink – to tie onto our tree.
My house, at 70 square metres, is no castle, but guess what? Like the Saudi Crown Prince, we have new LED Christmas lights we bought from The Warehouse that can be turned on and off with an iPhone app.