Money and Mansions

Today I don't claim to have invented my own inspiration... We've spoken of how limited that is these days :). But I was looking a one of the many, many photo blogs of the world; and one of the few I 'follow' in a very loose sense of that word... And there was a photo of summer mansions the blogger called them... The blog is Aronaeveryday which I might link to if I was feeling slightly more technological... Now all I know of these photos is they are of Arona... and that is where my knowledge ends... I'm assuming Arona is in Europe... somewhere... but really... to an Australian many 'european' things can't be segregated into their own countries without specific knowledge... Which I'm sure some europeans would be quite scandalised by :)...

Anyway beyond discussing Europe, which is guaranteed to crop up again as I get further into the topic at any rate… Back to the topic of summer mansions… He spoke (this was one of the few photos which had a sort of explanation outside the realm of the photo subject) of the closing the summer mansions as children and grandchildren go back to school etc… As though this was your run of the mill everyday occurrence. Maybe it is… somewhere.

Of course kids go in and out of school here as much as anywhere else… I have even heard some people speak of vacation homes (generally some kind of beach house)… But to me it seems so out of this world when they talk of these mansions… It is so extravagant. It is one of those signs of ‘old money’… There was a time when old money ruled the world, royal families and nobility and the like… However these days we are much more a world of new money… Celebrities and sports greats and entrepreneurs who make greatness from nothing… And new money acts in some ways rather differently to new money…

You certainly don’t hear about old money (unless it is very young and reckless thereby overindulged by media old money heirs) very much in the news… It is occasionally spoken of in books, though in many instances even that is rather speculation of the lifestyle. In the books I read it is very VERY romanticised :)… But it is completely out of this world to any regular everyday folk like myself…

Now here is where Europe comes back into the equation. Europe does old money in ways Australians couldn’t dream of… Australia has only been a country 100 or so years… and inhabited by a european originating people less than 3 times that… I couldn’t think of quite the right way to phrase that particular development… but anyway… Europe has random structures of little importance older than my COUNTRY… So these summer mansions in many cases are probably older than Australia and the money holding a few of them (no doubt many have changed hands with rises and falls in fortunes) probably older still…

That blows my mind… There are some people in the world that are rich beyond filthy rich… Really the filthy rich are the stars who squander their wealth and what not… Though give them a hundred years… Some of the celebrities are no doubt the beginning of a new collection of old money families… Though I doubt they’ll ever be quite the same as the others… The rich way of life with their summer mansions… I mean they aren’t even summer homes… no these places are MANSIONS… no doubt with balls and dinner parties to boot… And now I am getting my wires crossed with romance fiction again…

Well… I don’t have money… I doubt I’ll ever meet anybody that does… and I don’t really mind… I live solidly in the middle class… I expect I always will… though I can never know what exactly God as in store for my life… But the very idea of old money is mind boggling. I don’t know what to do with my whole paycheck… think I’m doing great cuz I’ve managed to save up a couple grand over the past year… and i’m talking POCKET CHANGE to some people in the world… That is what astounds me… Goes to show that it doesn’t matter at all… I have more than enough without the millions…

At any rate… I have a summer home… It is my family home… I guess that is quite the same as these summer mansions actually… Come Christmas (cause being awesome christmas and summer are the same things in aus) everybody lives in our house for the holidays… My grandad, my mum, her brothers, me and my brother, my uncle’s girlfriend and kids… Everybody it is a full house indeed… Feeling the love :)… Who needs a mansion anyway… I have a perfect good piece of floor and I love it :)