Deborah Hill Cone: Crying poor - it's such a bore

I had a delightful scoff of Peking duck pancakes at Euro last week with my bestie chum in the property industry, who, like most of us, has relocated to the villa of reduced circumstances. He was still pretty bon but not quite so vivant as in the days when he would fly all his staff overseas for their Christmas party. Goodbye Aston Martin, hello Blackberry bought second-hand off Trade Me. (Not a silly idea - get a handset for a lazy hundred - just make sure it is not from Bratislava and thus incompatible with Vodafone.)

He suggested a cheap set lunch but I put my foot down - clumsily, as I also almost fell off my seat. Is this what the world has come to? Fortunately, he has funded so much browsing and sluicing in the good years I could afford to cough up for once.

I think the fellow's financial rumptiness is not a bad thing. He is selling his Omaha-esque beach house - "too crisp" - and downsizing in other areas but keeping his vineyard. Financial conditions are inclement, but one doesn't have to throw in the towel completely. Of course, I don't give a nonce that his net worth has plummeted - whose hasn't? - I just hope all this dreary jawboning about money will end soon. This charming man didn't talk about buckaroos when he was lousy with dough - then it was all the important things in life, like the time he showed Bron Waugh around the loucher side of Wellington or what new wheeze Ukridge-like property geezers were plotting next. The fictional Ukridge - who calls everyone "laddie" or "my old horse" - always has some visionary scheme which will win him fame and fortune, but is hampered by lack of capital; in borrowing from friends he exhorts them to have "vision" and to maintain the "big, broad, flexible outlook".

Of course my fizzy comrade is not the only one who is at risk of becoming a recession bore. There is former radio DJ Justin Brown who has set up a website called www.wehaventlaidanyoneoff.com. I know I should say, "Good on ya, bro" for having a go, but but isn't there a fairly basic flaw in this campaign? Surely a site called www.welaidpeopleoffbutarestillmakingaprofit.com would be more praiseworthy.

Then there are the front page recession duffers who are selling all their worldly goods on Trade Me. They belong to a subset of recession bores who compete at "onedownmanship". You might be selling your boat, but we're selling our dog kennel, so there. And I notice they were even selling a child's tweed suit; if you dress your offspring like Little Lord Fauntleroy, you deserve everything you get. My property pal and I ended up with some jaunty pop at the new De Brett's hotel so equilibrium was restored to the universe. Which is not to say I have not drunk Fairhall River Claret before and will again. So what? Just because you are poor it is no reason to be a bore.

Blogger Cactus Kate has written a PFO letter to the Dominion Post after it dumbly canned her column after three years, just as she wrote what Bernard Hickey called the best story of the year picking apart the finances of the NZX.

"I stretched on for what seemed like an eternity in newspaper column world for a 'yoof'," writes 30-something Cactus. "Politicians, indeed possibly some of Christine Rankin's marriages, have lasted a shorter stretch than my column." A-ha. It seems anyone under 40 is a youth. But as a 41-year-old, I can attest that once you are over 40 in media terms you are a haggard has-been. These days, when decrepitly hip dads teach their 5-year-olds Smashing Pumpkins riffs, there is no middle age.

I look forward to hobbling along with my fellow oldsters and complaining about young people these days; who are all of ... 39.

deborah@coneandco.com