A little bit of posh-ness

I was invited yesterday evening to Christie’s champagne reception for today’s auction. They’re putting on sale a ‘Raphael’, some ‘Turners’, a ‘Domenico Zampieri’ and a ‘Rembrandt’ among other things. So, after work, I went home and put on my ‘proper good’ clothes and went there. OK, I don’t know what you people do for a living but for me that was a glimpse of the world of the rich. I knew it would be slightly boring but I hoped it would be a little bit interesting.


So, when we arrived, there were some really nice cars stopping in the front and leaving some quite good-looking-in-a-very-rich-kind-of-way people. On the ground floor you were welcomed by a number of people checking that you were in the guest list and the cloakroom. After climbing a nicely decorated big staircase, you would go to the rooms where all the items meant to be auctioned the next day were. The average age of the people was over 60 with a couple of exemptions of young, richly dressed companions. There was a live band of four musicians playing classical music and champagne and drinks served nonstop. Maybe their purpose was to get you drunk to actually put a bid for some of the items.

The ‘Il Domenichino’ starting price was £7,000,000 ($11,508,000), the ‘Rembrandt’ £18,000,000 ($29,592,000) and the ‘Raphael’ was £12,000,000 ($19,728,000). Impressive number of zeros, I know… However, there were some items being sold, that I thought were amazingly overpriced. Nonetheless, if you really want to buy me something (it’s Christmas after all) I really like this one by Turner and it’s quite cheap with starting price of £50,000. It's from a place called Corinth, in Greece. What do you say?


After walking around the rooms of expensive furniture and paintings, you begin to realize (as expecting) though, how phony and unimpressive this world of the rich can be. There were some very stylish people wearing really expensive clothes and jewelry. However, among the people, you could see the rich sugar-daddy with a trophy half-his-age companion (most of the times blonde with fake boobs), the snobbish art know-it-all that hadn’t had a shower in ages or the sleazy man being there trying to enter this circle of people by any means necessary. That was extremely obvious in the room where food was served. That room was never empty and all these people that were supposed to be well mannered were trying to jump the queue to get another bite of foie gras, jamon or turkey.

OK, I don’t want to be plain mean. Apart from the obvious newly rich people, the whole experience was interesting and had some style. I was less bored than I feared, although my friend ‘gb’ was more bored and less impressed than he hoped. I am not the type of person easily impressed by glamour and expensive clothes and accessories. I know you don’t need them to be happy in life, although some hundred thousand pounds would be well received.
I don’t want to sound greedy, I don’t want millions of them.
OK, ok…
I admit it, I wouldn’t say no to them either…

At least I saw Jeremy Irons at Christie’s, which was nice…