A delicious merlot

Being a fairly straight-forward person (I hope), I can sniff out pretentious-ness in a split second, as can (and could) the rest of my family. So I'm fond of describing other people as pretentious.

But what exactly does pretentious mean? I would say any or all of the following:

• Name dropping ("As Ian McEwan once said to Zadie Smith....")
• Claiming to know all about some obscure topic ("Of course marine biology has a lot to say about coral reefs")
• Claiming to have met lots of famous people ("As I was saying to Greta Thunberg....")
• Posing as a connoisseur of wine ("A delicious merlot. Strong alpine notes with overtones of pampas grass")
• Claiming to have read every significant book ("I absolutely adore Ulysses. Molly Bloom is quite unforgettable")
• Purporting to be generally better educated, more discerning, more sophisticated ("Anyone with half a brain can see the economy is about to collapse")
• Slavishly following the latest fashions ("My dear, bootleg jeans are so last year")
• Maintaining that difficult, laborious novels are superior to ones that are readable and uncomplicated ("The reader should have to do a bit of work")
• Concocting ridiculous explanations of art works ("James is interested in the interface between spatial awareness and partial enclosure")
• Liking restaurants that offer tiny meals with strange ingredients rather than a good plateful of something with chips ("This chef is so wonderfully experimental")
• Peppering your conversation with foreign phrases ("It was a coup de theatre, a performance sans pareil")

I think you'll have the general idea by now. So au revoir, mes amis, wishing you oodles of joie de vivre and esprit de corps. Á chacun son goût, as Pablo Picasso once said.

PS: Jean thinks I'm being pretentious myself by acting superior to people who're pretentious. Could she be right?

Ego shortage

What a lot of problems egos cause. All those over-the-top individuals who demand that we keep admiring them, pumping them up, fawning all over them. What hard work it is to feed their absurd pretensions.

At least if someone has an obvious ego, you can make a point of avoiding them. It's trickier when someone has an ego but pretends they don't and you get sucked in. They seem modest enough, but scratch the surface and there's the familiar self-importance and craving for attention and adulation.

I don't have much ego myself (no, really....). I've no desire to be seen as important or the centre of attention or a role model or a trend-setter. I'm happy to be anonymous and unremarkable. My impulse when surrounded by other people is not to have all eyes on me but to merge into the background. In fact the idea of being the centre of attention and subject to sharp-eyed scrutiny is quite alarming. Who knows what personal foibles will be eagerly pounced on?

I shudder at the thought of being a role model or a trend-setter. What, me with all my myriad hang-ups and fixations and shortcomings? No, no, don't copy me, copy someone who's worth copying - someone with visible talent and insight and imagination. My own talents consist of getting by, keeping out of trouble and feathering my own nest. Hardly a valuable gift to humanity.

If I draw attention at all, it's probably for all the wrong reasons. I've just knocked over a bottle of wine or said something stunningly rude or a chair has collapsed under me. It's highly unlikely I've drawn attention for my dazzlingly perceptive take on South American literary trends or melting Arctic glaciers. My opinions are about as significant as bus-shelter graffiti.

I don't mind if I drop dead having been of no importance to anyone except my small circle of loved ones. The obituary columns will just have to do without me.

Pretentious, moi?

Am I pretent-ious? Do I try to impress people with all sorts of phoney tricks and gambits? Do I think the real me is too dull and too ordinary to interest people?

Sometimes I decide, yes, I'm totally pretentious, I'm trying to wow everyone with my superior education or my clever arguments or my worldliness or my political right-on-ness. I want them to think I'm a bit special, a bit remarkable, someone they'll remember when they've forgotten a hundred other people.

Then I think, no, that's utter crap, I'm not the slightest bit pretentious, I know my education was mediocre and most of my clever arguments are bullshit and I'm about as worldly as a dormouse and politically right-on as the weather forecast.

I know perfectly well I'm probably as dull and ordinary as the next person and there's no point in pretending otherwise. I might think I'm special but that's just my inflated opinion of all the personal clichés and platitudes that I fondle and caress in the privacy of my own ego.

At the end of the day, pretending to be more sophisticated than I am isn't going to fool anyone. People aren't that stupid, they can tell the difference between meaningless bollocks and emotional and psychological truth. They want to see the real me, however dull and ordinary and messy, they don't want some showy performance.

So no, I don't think I'm pretentious, but I may just want to think that, I may just want to convince myself I'm a regular guy with no airs and graces. Other people may be laughing like drains, ready to point out all my pompous pronouncements and vacuous statements and puncture my balloon of self-satisfaction.

Please do. Honest opinions are always welcome. You're not likely to dent my ego, which is about the size of a garden pea and has probably already slipped down the back of the sofa. Go on, tell me the truth. Pretentious, moi?

Off trend

I couldn't be pretentious to save my life. I do what I want to do, and if it isn't trendy or cultured or flashy enough, that's too bad.

I see other people with their Armani jeans and iPads and Lady Gaga tickets and the Morrissey book and I think, well, that's fine, whatever turns you on, but I'm not going to rush out and buy all the latest fashionable bits and bobs just to prove I'm a cutting-edge sophisticate who knows where it's at. Whatever It may be. And wherever It may be lurking.

I insist on buying cheap chain-store jeans, tickets for old-timers like K T Tunstall, books by obscure authors nobody's ever heard of, and comfort food scarcely mentioned by all the celebrity chefs. I know practically everything I do or say is thoroughly off-message, and I don't give a damn.

The few times I've actually tried to be up-to-the-minute, style-conscious and so-hip-it-hurts, it's been a dismal failure and whispered put-downs and stifled giggles are the order of the day. I just somehow lose the plot and look like a pathetic wannabe trailing hopelessly behind the smug pace-setters.

When I was at boarding school, I tried desperately to be as smoothly masculine and rugged as the other boys, but of course it didn't work. However hard I tried, I still ended up as the effeminate wimp who simpered when I should be growling, and let my hair flop everywhere instead of slicking it back like Elvis.

As a teenage dater, I sometimes tried to be the cool, monosyllabic guy with the perfect social poise, but inevitably I reverted to type and remained the bashful, stuttering greenhorn terrified that any intelligent woman would laugh hysterically at my mumbled request for a second date.

No, I leave the pretentious posing and posturing to others, and continue to go my own way, gazing curiously at the breathless trend-setters scurrying along several miles ahead.

Don't mind me. I'm quite happy where I am.