True luxury is not a new home, it is the ability to know when we are being had

In a community like ours of stark socio-economic contrasts, where the top wages in the finance sector are on a par with those of pampered players of football’s Premier League, there is a demand for luxury, indulgence and designer goods.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the brash collection of developments branded as ‘luxury’ and currently on the market.

You only have to flick through the pages of celebrity magazines packed with through-the-keyhole features on TV personalities, footballers, fashion designers and European royalty to realise that money doesn’t always buy taste or class.

Wherever we turn, there it is, regarding everything from expensive chocolate bars to old Jersey farmhouses tarted up to fetch millions, shouting at us that this item is a luxury, a status symbol of wealth and achievement. In some instances the quality of the product justifies the hype, but in many it does not.

You can bet your granny’s pension pot that if the object is not branded as luxurious, then it is likely to be described as either premier, unparalleled, outstanding, first-class, world-class, unique, superior, exceptional or simply the best.

How sad that an impressionable gaggle of rock-huggers are so increasingly fixated and taken in by the concept of luxury. As the Pied Piper’s melodic tune persuaded the children of Hamelin to follow him into oblivion, so the more gullible souls among us are seduced by the insincere marketing speak designed to sell the concept of luxury as the optimum life-enhancing force.

(Dear reader, please accept my profound and sincere apology for such a sorry descent to the depths of corporate babble by using that dreadful term life-enhancing, which, like the equally obnoxious life-enriching, should be banned from the English language.)

A cursory trawl of the modern-day oracle, the internet, reveals several versions of what constitutes a luxury, but the one that fits the bill for my purpose is: anything which pleases the senses, and is also costly, or difficult to obtain; an expensive rarity, as silks, jewels and rare fruits are luxuries. In some countries, ice is a great luxury.

Every time a glossy brochure drops through the letterbox in an attempt to persuade me that living in some luxury human equivalent of a rabbit hutch condominium, or residing cheek-by-jowl in a gated middle-class ghetto, will improve my well-being, another definition of luxury springs to mind: something that is supposed to be luxurious but which in reality is soulless, tasteless and image-conscious.

Where is the pleasure – or privacy, come to that – of living in a house with more plate glass than the frontage of a Queen Street store? How on earth do you keep it clean? Do you ban children with sticky fingers from the house, or does the multi-million-pound price tag come with a full-time resident window cleaner?

And can someone explain the pleasure of a kitchen with floor and surface coverings that cost more than a super car and which can be ruined by a single scratch?

Such supposed luxury dwellings may be nice to behold, but are they practical places in which to live, let alone evolve into comfortable and easy-living homes?

Give me the Kirsty Allsop shabby chic approach to interior design any day, because a house isn’t a home without character, soul and the individual touches of those who live there.

Although the resourceful Ms Allsop has sufficient funds at her disposal to employ legions of helpers in her endeavours, she also gets stuck in, gets her hands dirty and so obviously relishes exploring second-hand shops, car-boot sales and antique markets for bargains.

How much more exciting and rewarding than adhering to the Margot Leadbetter (of The Good Life fame) example of home-making: she simply had everything delivered in a van, even Christmas.

The sad thing about the concept of having everything delivered or all tasks done for you is missing out on the ‘doing.’ It is not impossible to build a house from scratch, as the popular and more cerebral of the glut of home makeover programmes, Grand Designs, shows us every night, and hour after hour, on More4!

Having watched Kevin McCloud’s countless encounters with intrepid DIY enthusiasts for years, I feel confident of being able to renovate a dilapidated barn, restore an Alpine ski chalet or assemble a Huf Haus blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back.

Why not start from scratch with a plot of land and a kit house? With so many self-build homes on the market, and most of them more eco-friendly than the average Jersey home and acceptable even to the strict planning guidelines of UK National Parks, they could be a solution to the Island’s problem of providing affordable first-time-buyer homes.

It may not appeal to everyone, but who knows until someone gives it a go?

I bet I would not be alone in preferring a collection of eco-homes built around the Island to the copycat modern estates more reminiscent of ‘middleclassville’ UK or the expensive residential complexes emerging like sore thumbs at places like Portelet Bay.

Whatever the glossy brochures, seductive adverts or marketing babble try to sell us, the greatest luxury in life is having eyes to see beyond the flannel and a mind to know when we are being had.