Having belatedly discovered the phrase “high-net-worth individual”, I can categorically state that I’m not one. And barring something entirely unexpected happening – like the cat achieving global stardom, with me on 10 per cent – I’m not going to be.
Furthermore, given that the new moggie is a bog-standard (if pleasingly velvety) black cat with yellow eyes and a pink tongue (which she uses to diligently wash her bottom while sitting on the ironing board), that outcome doesn’t look likely.
I might, of course, win some obscene amount of money on the lottery, but that would require purchasing a ticket, something I’ve never done. In my tiny mind, there’s little point queueing up next to the chicken fillet rolls and cowboy-flavoured crisps on a Saturday night to waste my scrappy bit of cash on a chit when, reportedly, 64 per cent of the adult population in this country are doing exactly the same thing. Odds-on then that I’m more likely to grow whiskers and develop the agility to lick my own baggy posterior than become a lottery millionaire.
I posit that Gwyneth's kitchen is as spotless as her celery-juice-washed oesophagus and her plunge pool no less pristine than her yoni egg palace
Anyway, what if you did win a staggering fortune when the entire shagging world is in crisis? I’d be beside myself trying to assuage my conscience, let alone bankrolling family and friends who, rather irritatingly, had just not made the requisite efforts to be high-net-worth-individuals either.
Having bitten down hard on my clenched knuckles and reluctantly come to terms with my non-HNWI status, I now accept that I’ll never have 3D hand-painted wallpaper in my downstairs toilet. Or, for that matter, a home spa replete with hot tub, cold tub, plunge pool, sauna, steam room and an actual pool that you swim in, the whole fandango shrouded in the glow of tastefully curated uplighting (or maybe I mean downlighting).
I’ve also had to quell my desire for a cushioned swing in my living room, one that I might have rocked myself to sleep in, thinking about art and life and the unlikely stash of cash I’d made out of marketing a product called This Candle Smells Like My Vagina.
Yep, I am never going to be Gwyneth Paltrow.
Recently, though, I frittered away some amusing minutes watching a clip of the Goop founder entertain a camera crew from Architectural Digest, whose latest issue features a tour of her brand-new California mansion.
She sets the domestic bar high, does our Gywnnie – holy cow, her home is clean. I posit that her kitchen is as spotless as her celery-juice-washed oesophagus and her plunge pool no less pristine than her yoni egg palace.
The woman has dressers full of shining crockery, great big gleaming brass taps and a floor that you could lick your cultured vegan butter off. As an enthusiastic cook, her shelves are stocked with a veritable arsenal of cast-iron cookware. Why, our girl could wage a culinary war with the armoury of pots at her disposal. She could chargrill the population of her Montecito neighbourhood and still have a skillet left over for a boneless sea bream.
Apologies if I sound a tad peevish; maybe I am. It’s just that back in my own (fortunate albeit decidedly non-high-net-worth) world, my washing machine is broken, there’s scrambled egg stuck to the non-stick saucepan, and the floor tiles are cracked from when, during Covid, my kitchen doubled as a home gym.
Many women of my generation are chained to notions of domestic perfectionism far more rigorous than my own, but, unlike Gwyneth, are without the staff or stylists
Recently, before leaving the house to go gadding about, I gazed (perhaps a little too fondly) at the pattern of splattered kitten milk on the floor, at the streaked windowpanes, at the unwashed clothes slumbering in their basket. I thought about the many women of my generation who are chained to notions of domestic perfectionism far more rigorous than my own, but who, unlike Gwyneth, are without the staff or stylists to achieve them.
I have a pal, of whom I am awfully fond, who, mid-conversation, can become quite distracted if her skirting boards are scuffed. A sensitive, hardworking, diligent woman, she rings dates on her calendar to remind her to turn the mattresses.
Once, when our children were small, I suggested to her that ironing non-iron pillowcases was no way to evade mortality, that death and disorder couldn’t be dissolved with a blast of Toilet Duck. She looked at me kindly and sent me home with a plug-in air-freshener.
It’s still mouldering away under my sink somewhere.
Maybe Madame Paltrow could invent another product line for those of her followers paddling away on the domestic-goddess carousel: This Candle Smells Like My Lumbago.