Luxury be damned

Is luxury all it's cracked up to be? We're always given the impression that "luxury" experiences are a cut above the bog-standard stuff us lesser mortals are expected to make do with. But is it true?

Jay Rayner, the Guardian's food critic, says that when it comes to food, he much prefers an ordinary everyday meal to supposed luxuries like champagne receptions, 11-course tasting menus, hotel afternoon teas, extravagant food presents, or even breakfast in bed. The blatant over-indulgence and fancy-pants palaver is not for him.

Well, being of modest means, my experience of luxury has been pretty limited, but I tend to agree with him that luxury is rather over-rated. I have no desire to be chauffeured everywhere, buy £200 shirts, sip exotic cocktails on my private yacht, or own a 50-room mansion.

I'm more than happy in my unassuming house, scoffing mushroom risotto, sipping a humble glass of white wine, and reading a good book. That's more than enough to send me to bed feeling happy and relaxed. I see nothing inferior or deprived about such a low-key lifestyle.

That said, I can think of a few luxuries I'd appreciate. First class travel on planes and trains would be rather wonderful. Ditto a huge private swimming pool with nobody to collide with. Ditto a private beach free of children kicking balls in my direction. Ditto private health care that avoids the horrendous NHS waiting lists (I hasten to add I've always been loyal to the NHS, even when I waited 18 months for routine prostate surgery).

But they're all things I can easily do without. In any case I don't like the way luxury lifestyles cut you off from the rest of society. What's the point of £200 shirts if it means you look down on those who can barely afford to eat?

The tantalising smell of a delicious meal is luxury enough for me.

Little luxuries

I guess we all have a different idea of what's a luxury and what's just a routine part of daily life. It all depends on your personal circumstances of course and how much spare cash you can afford to throw around.

A survey of people's little luxuries revealed some surprising "luxuries", like someone making you a cup of tea, or a lunch date with a friend, or quilted toilet paper. I wouldn't have thought any of those were very special.

For me, a luxury is something much grander, more unusual, and more pampering. Something that lifts me out of my everyday existence and makes me feel on top of the world, however briefly.

Some of my personal luxuries are:

1) Eating out. Hugely extravagant but a lovely occasional treat.
2) Foreign holidays, especially in places I've never been to before.
3) Extra-delicious food. In particular bread, cake, desserts, chocolate.
4) Wine, prosecco, champagne.
5) A trip to the theatre. Only rarely given such crazy prices!
6) My weekly chat with Jenny in the local coffee shop.
7) Books. I love being totally engrossed in a really good book.
8) A beautiful piece of furniture that cost a lot but I can enjoy it for years.
9) Ditto a beautiful painting.
10) Lazing in the garden on a hot, sunny day. Not that frequent in Belfast!

It's all very relative though. To someone desperately poor, getting a takeaway, having a manicure or buying new bed linen might be the height of luxury, while to someone fabulously rich, to feel any sense of luxury they'd have to buy yet another Rolls-Royce or a £10,000 coat.

It's interesting how yesterday's luxuries often become today's standard items - like washing machines, mobile phones and air travel. And how quickly we take them for granted, as if they were always easily affordable.

"Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury" - Coco Chanel

Posh gits

I may have a posh accent, but I'm not remotely posh in any other respect. I may seem "posh" to those who have very little, but my lifestyle is quite unremarkable beside the real thing.

I may own my house and my car, have some savings, and live in a sedate residential area, but that doesn't make me in any way posh. There are thousands of people just like that.

I think the essence of poshness is rarity value (or luxury). The truly posh have things the vast majority of us don't have. A country mansion, a yacht, a chauffeur-driven limo, a private jet. Things the average person can only dream of (that is, if we really want a draughty old mansion or a condescending chauffeur).

The other ingredient of poshness is a "fancy" way of doing things. Soup spoons, fish forks, napkins. Bow ties, cuff links, top hats. Ornate invitations and letters. Always something more than the bog-standard routine. Something that sets you apart from the common crowd.

Not necessarily sophisticated though. You can be as posh as you like in terms of lifestyle, but dumb as they come when any hard thinking is required. The term "upper-class twit" comes to mind.

Poshness often goes hand in hand with pretentiousness. People think that because they're posh they're somehow a cut above the non-posh, somehow in some rarified category of their own.

That absolutely doesn't wash in Northern Ireland. It's very refreshing that people here despise any kind of pretentiousness. Anyone who acts superior is very quickly cut down to size. As we say here, they're "losing the run of themselves".

You can talk to a chief executive as casually as the refuse collector. You could be with someone who's filthy rich but they'd show no sign of it. People aren't as obsessed with social status as they are elsewhere.

"Pomposhity" will get you nowhere.

Little luxuries

I suppose we all have different ideas of what a life of luxury would consist of. Not necessarily limousines and yachts, or servants waiting on us hand and foot. Just those things that would make our own particular lives easier, cosier and a bit more exciting. In my case, the list of luxuries would include the following:

• Never having to worry about money ever again.
• Constant warmth all the year round (move to Australia perhaps?)
• Perfect health into old age
• Beautiful clothes (satin pants? dresses? skirts?)
• Delicious food from my personal chef
• Several good, close friends
• Brilliant paintings in every room
• Go to gigs by all my favourite musicians (no expense spared - wherever they may be)
• A chauffeur for long car trips
• A private swimming pool (or even a private lake)
• Travel to the world's most exotic places (business class naturally)
• A photographic memory

Those are merely the ones that came to mind. I'm sure there are many more.

Not that I find my present-day life lacking or frustrating. On the contrary. My life is fine just as it is. But it's fun to imagine those little embellishments that would make it even better. There's nothing wrong with daydreams.

Greed

I have many failings, but greed isn't one of them. I tend to be content with what I have and not forever wondering how I can get even more.

It's an odd trait, when everyone around me seems to be piling up possessions as if their lives depend on it. Why I'm immune I don't know.

Perhaps it's because I always see the practicalities of wild longings. If I see a huge country mansion, I don't think I'd like to own it. I just think of the colossal maintenance it must need simply to keep it in repair.

When I read about billionaires, I don't covet those vast hoards of cash. I imagine all the begging letters, all the relatives itching to get their hands on it, and the headache of keeping track of where it all is.

I hear of people who have 500 pairs of shoes or 20 cars and I'm just bemused. Why on earth would anyone want all these things? I've never owned excessive amounts of anything, only what I need or what gives me a bit of pleasure.

I've never had this strange urge to keep adding and adding and adding to what I already have. In fact I have more of an urge to subtract things, to get rid of stuff I don't need that just annoys me and clutters the place up.

I don't believe luxury is the pinnacle of existence either. I take all those images of pampered lifestyles, full of limos, uniformed flunkeys and opulent furnishings, with a large pinch of salt. Behind the glittering facades there's plenty of hidden tension and personal angst. You can buy all the thick-pile carpets you like, but it won't guarantee happiness or peace of mind.

Greed is a luxury I can do without.