HolidayHouseHorror

I was sipping a glass of whiskey, gloomily staring into the binnebraai fire, when I experienced one of those rare flashes of insight that only come along when the conditions are just exactly right. In this case, the conditions being a cane chair upholstered in little leaping dolphins with crazy smiles, and a side table encrusted with seashells.

And the insight was this: the holiday houses of some of my friends are just like their new-born babies. Not because they’re about to devour their disposable income for the foreseeable future, and not because they’re always damp and smell funny. No, holiday houses are like new-born babies because they’re always so ugly, but you have to lie to your friends and tell them they’re beautiful.

Actually, the other way that holiday houses are like babies is that the proud owners insist on telling you about the travails of bringing the damn things into the world. There’s always a litany of breach births, bad builders, broken waters and flooded drains. Which complaint goes with which activity, I don’t know. It all starts to blur after a while.

What is it about holiday houses (and babies, but I think we’ve  had enough of that analogy for now) that makes the owners unable to see them for what they are? How come someone who lives in an upmarket, perfectly set up house in the suburbs decides it’s alright to furnish the house where they go to relax with grubby castoffs?

I could go on, but this isn’t a column about decor. It’s a column about how men see certain issues in a sometimes slightly, sometimes wildly, different way to women. But allow me one more holiday home hint. It’s called the Colander Test. Check your friends’ kitchen cupboards in both their homes. If the colander in their normal house is a space age Alessi in a molten gold colour, and the one in their holiday home is a stained plastic Addis left to them by a grandmother, then that’s a holiday house you don’t want to be in.

The strange thing about all this is that holiday houses and newborn babies, to the casual male observer, appear to be the only two things that women lie to each other about. The same woman who can tell her friend, quite openly, that her makeup makes her look like a refugee from a Patricia Lewis drag contest, will barefacedly lie about the shrivelled up heap that is a newborn baby. And equally, the same woman who will tell her friend that her roast lamb is “a little dry” (believe me, that’s harsh criticism) will lie about the drafty pastel nightmare that is the new holiday house by the beach.

Now these are the very same women who will tell their boyfriends or husbands, without a single qualm, and without any hesitation whatsoever, that they’re too old for sleeveless tops and look like Michael Douglas on a bad day. That’s just a random example that happened to a friend of mine. The truth is, holiday houses and babies are to women what the classic “Does my bum look big in this?” question is to men. Unless you lie absolutely and shamelessly, you’re in big trouble. You can’t even display lukewarm approval. It has to be a gushing, ecstatic affirmation. I guess that’s because they put so much work into getting them. The babies and houses, obviously, not the bums.

(previously published in Shape magazine)

1. 

   Lameez says:

   February 10, 2010 at 3:12 pm

   So true! Thanks for the giggles!