My
wife cuts (shaves) my hair.
I seldom take a blade to my face, so razors aren't a grocery item.
My wife uses our car to ferry the kids; I bike to work.
In summer I solar shower under our ngaio tree - if there's enough water after my kids have been through it.
I take a container of muesli to the newsroom yet use company milk to fill it.
From the previous summer's seeds I propagate tomatoes, basil and chillies.
While my friends dive for paua with weight belts, purpose-designed knives, goggles and flippers, I enter the briny with an old chisel, t-shirt and sneakers.
Why am I not rolling in it?
It's not like I'm a slacker on the job, either.
I work even when I'm not on the clock. Yesterday, for instance, I was in Palmy (that most ironic of provincial abbreviations) where instead of enjoying Manawatu's miserable weather I penned this.
I work so hard I've lost count of columns and stories completed in the wee small hours after relentless tirades of abuse from reluctant subjects. I've lost count of the times I've braved snarling pitbulls to knock on mobsters' front doors for comment, faced unforgiving deadlines, nutters who tell me they know the truth, conspiracists who think the world conspires against them, lefties who detect Tory undercurrents in my work, Tories who suspect I read Lenin, believers alleging blasphemy and my editor claiming I dress too casually.
Despite the tough toil and meagre existence, I remain the Rich List's Andy Murray.
Yet as it so happens, I was recently rich.
A fortnight ago I flew business-class to China. I stayed in boutique 5-star hotels, sipped cocktails on Shanghai rooftops and ate at internationally praised restaurants - including a Beijing joint designed by Philippe Starck.
I was privy to an elite lounge at Auckland International Airport, where, wearing pretty much what I wear diving for paua, I availed myself of free pre-flight food and grog.
Actually I made a b-line for the single malt. As opposed to beer and its ensuing toilet stops, scotch is a prudent choice.
On board the jet, hostesses not only knew my name, but used honorifics ("Mr" Story).
At the flick of a button my cushioned armchair morphed into a full-length bed.
But of all the novelties, the most striking was the embarrassment of my newfound-means; looking back at economy-class sparked an awkwardness.
You see, business class also buys you right of way. Once we'd docked, sleep-deprived economy passengers were forced to wait as us well-rested affluent left the plane first, on pressing business.
As I fraudulently shuffled past the hoi polloi masses, it dawned there's but a thin curtain separating our business-class bonhomie from the proletariat.
For all our privilege, if the engines failed at 40,000 feet, the plane would be rendered classless.
As we bussed into Shanghai's CBD, I thought of metaphoric thin curtains back home.
Hastings, for instance, where an earnest and self-styled windscreen cleaner can be seen plying his trade every day in busy traffic outside a successful merchant banking firm. And in the same city a racetrack, that for years hosted the country's richest stakes just 100m from a courthouse with one of the highest volumes in the land.
I'm not about to slam the well-heeled. Nor do I resent the Bay's established rich or silver spooners - even those who still literally work for dad.
In fact I'm pro-rich. Moreover I'm stunned by the public's admonishment of the rich. That popular opinion that says success can come only after moral failing. Or, that to win the rat race, one must inevitably be a rat.
Such drivel stems from our culture of envy. A word forgotten by those who opt to use its more acceptable cousin - egalitarian.
As a journo I've been privy to many private donations made by the Bay's wealthy. Those who read about the plights of the less fortunate, contact the paper as an intermediary and write cheques on the basis it's done anonymously.
I congratulate them - and all those who beat me by a nose to make this year's list.
Under my ngaio tree, where the status anxiety kicks in, I remind myself wealth is relative to desire. The Rich List is like that thin curtain; an arbitrary divider of wealth, class and status. That is, criteria of little importance.
Besides, given my week's-worth of affluence, (bank-rolled by someone else) I've decided I'd make a useless rich lister.
I'd be in a constant state of embarrassment, drink unhealthy volumes of Laphroaig and dress too casually.
Mark Story is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today
