12. Dream house

I use to work for a catering company and that gave me the opportunity to enter into quite a few million dollar homes. These palaces had kitchens that could house an Airbus 380, but commonly, most were vastly underused by their owners. For some reason that made me seeth with anger. Such a waste.

When my father was a butler he use to have to pack up his things and move with the Old Lady down to Palm Beach, Florida for a few months over the winter. The Old Lady’s house was maybe 3 “doors” down from Donald Trump’s shitty beach house so you get the kind of house it was. I think the stucco was made from the blood of tiny children who used the bones from their brothers and sisters as support beams. It reeked of money. The house wasn’t any higher than three storeys but it was sprawling, wrapped around a pool that any 50’s film star would have enjoyed lounging around. It was a dream house, but not entirely my kind of home.

One of the nicest homes I’ve ever been in while staying in London was a converted stable that was only 15 feet wide, three storeys high and the top floor decked out with slanted skylight windows. It was hidden away from the high street in a long forgotten Mews. While it was very thin, it was very long and tall. Much like the man who occupied it. But that’s another blog post.

When I was a kid we had a cottage that had nearly all one wall made of glass – it looked out over the lake and partially into our neighbour’s yard so his late night drunken skinny dipping was something of a flashlight show. The rest of the cottage was a basic shack, but I did love that front wall. Until it came time every fall to cover it up with 5 layers of tarp and plastic. Then it was a chore.

I currently live in an apartment over a store. It’s long and has limited lighting, shitty air in the summer but massive amounts of room for the price we pay. I like it. But the neighbourhood is starting to bring me down. Most places in downtown Toronto are…

I think I’d love to live in Disneyland’s Monsanto House of the Future. It’s said they had the hardest time to bring that thing down due to how well the Monsanto company created their plastics. Regardless, I love how it brought the promise of a better future to all who walked past it’s plastic threshold.