Real Life | 28 March 2009

This recession ought to suit me down to the ground because I hate anything that costs a lot of money. I’m the sort of person who sits in a Michelin-starred restaurant reading the menu and suddenly blurts out, ‘HOW MUCH!? Fifty pounds for a starter?! I’m not paying that!’ and summons the waiter to complain about the prices to the utter despair of my dining companion, who then has to work for the rest of the meal to re-assemble any vestige of style and elegance we might have had when we walked in. This is usually attempted by ordering the most expensive things on the menu while I loll around in paroxysms of agony, gripping at the Michelin-starched tablecloth and suffering an imagined angina attack brought on by fancy living. I then proceed to choke ostentatiously on the delicacies put in front of me and complain about the effect of the rich food on the balance of my digestive system for many hours, and sometimes weeks. It’s simply not worth taking me out for a high-class meal. Something only tastes good to me if it costs about £7. It doesn’t matter how much fois gras and gently coddled quail’s egg you put in it, if an appetiser costs £50 it triggers my gag reflex.

Similarly something can only look good to me if it has a price tag of around £39.99. If an item of clothing costs more than that I start to gather resentments about it and make huge and impossible demands of it. ‘Why have you not made me happier?’ I might ask a designer jacket peeping at me provocatively from the back of the wardrobe where I have pushed it to get it out of my sight.

Consequently I’ve become quite good at buying cheap clothes which look like they might be something fabulous. I have lost track of the amount of people who have asked me whether my black jacket with white piping is Chanel. To which I answer, ‘No, Marks and Spencer’s and it wasn’t cheap — £40! Never again…’ etc.

My friends say I’m mean. But this just isn’t true. There is a specific reason for my attitude to money and it is very straightforward, though not necessarily moral. I don’t like spending £50 on a starter because £50 would buy a full set of horse shoes. I don’t like spending £100 on a new jacket because £100 would buy a lightweight summer turn-out rug.

Quite why horses have always qualified in my mind for entirely grudge-free cheque writing I have never fully understood. But the strange fact is I would gladly surrender the entire contents of my bank account every month to the cause of maintaining equines in livery. The rest of life’s expenses, from meals out to clothes and face creams, are a shocking extravagance which leave me reeling with stomach-churning guilt.

No doubt I shall hit 70 and be a complete sight, having not spent a penny on myself in 50 years. Whereas my horses will be as shiny and healthy and wrinkle free as the day I bought them.

The problem is making other people, especially my long-suffering nearest and dearest, understand my affliction. For example, my boyfriend very wonderfully insisted on buying me a pair of beautiful designer stilettos recently. Rather than celebrating when I found out that they cost £300, I had nightmares about what could be purchased in Roker’s horse supply shop for this amount. In one particular vision I had my arms full of new rugs, bridles, and myriad other heavenly-smelling leather horsey items, which began to shrink in my hands until they became a tiny pair of snakeskin sling-backs, at which point I woke in a sweat.

I love the shoes, but the challenge now is actually to wear them while keeping at bay visions of what my inner horse obsessive thinks they represent.

This will not be easy. The £170 Ugg boots which have appeared in this column before still fester in my understairs cupboard. I cannot wear them because the horrible luxurious feel of them reminds me of the fancy leather headcollars my horses might have now if they had never existed.

One day soon I intend to write a book about all the expensive personal items I have ever purchased which have caused me nothing but confusion. In this anti-capitalist tract, very much a book of its time I feel, I will set out in chilling detail how I once obtained a pinstriped linen suit for £400 and every time I wore it disaster struck. I will explain my belief that this is because £400 is exactly the amount of one month’s stable livery. As I say, it’s very straightforward.