In our headlong rush to an ever more sophisticated life, there are some queer ideas gaining currency in the land. Among these is the notion that the garden should be considered as "an extension" of the family home. We are being asked to consider the bright new concept of the garden as an extra room or even a "series of interconnected rooms".
This is daft. We could all do with an extra room on which to make a few bob on the side, perhaps renting it out to a Spanish student and not a word to the taxman. But we cannot ask young Arturo, with his poor grasp of English, to make his home in the garden, even if we get him to swallow the notion that it is an extension of the house, complete with a "natural" carpet of grass. Even a qualified translator will have difficulty making the thing appear plausible. And it will not sound good when Arturo writes home to his querida madre (Arturo is a rather formal child) and tells her the nature of his accommodation, never mind the good chance of him getting his death of cold and rain.
If however you succumb to the new fashion and your former garden is transformed into a "series of interconnected rooms", successfully rented out to brown-skinned teenage foreigners of both sexes, you will have the added worry of their likely behaviour. Can you see yourself with a torch at midnight, patrolling the so-called extension to your family home, squashing slugs under your feet and stubbing your toes on the rockery? No. I think not.
The Spaniards are way behind us socially speaking, but very down to earth, and there is no way they will accept that a garden is a room. If they think we are all going down this garden/room road the whole language student business could dry up overnight. We have to be very strong to resist the gush of the style police responsible for such silly notions. It can be hard to get through to certain people in the remote, elevated world of design the simple fact that a room usually involves four walls, a ceiling and a door, but we must not give in.
Years ago it became fashionable to have a "garage conversion", so much so that new houses were regularly built with integral garages which were excitedly advertised as being "easily convertible to an extra room". I once naively asked a builder why, since its attractions were so great, and the appeal of a garage so clearly limited, the extra room was not simply incorporated in the house from the start. He explained, quite patiently, that if the room were there ab initio (his own words) then it would not be, nor ever could be, an "extra" room. I understand the same man is now an associate professor of Theosophical Studies in Berkeley College, California.
But you would often hear eager young couples talking of "converting the garage" as if they were Mormon proselytisers from Salt Lake City. If, subsequently you were innocent enough to accept the invitation to view the newly-converted garage, it would usually turn out to be a perfectly pleasant, ordinary room, but always with a sense of something missing: like a car.
So it is that a garden will always be a garden.
All right. Now to more important matters. I see that Wim "Dozy" Duisenberg, the new head of the European Central Bank, has been butting in where he is not wanted, namely in the budgetary affairs of our sovereign nation.
Dozy, who only got the job after an embarrassing political row, suggested recently in Le Figaro that we may be "forced" to tighten budget policy later this year. The cheek of him. Are we really expected to take seriously anything in a newspaper named after a buffoonish opera character? Charlie McCreevy however was well able for Dozy and basically told him to mind his own budgetary business. Charlie has done the same with the IMF, the OECD, the EU and just about any set of self-important initials you could think of.
Most other European countries, but in particular Britain, as it teeters on the brink of recession, are green with envy over this country's giant economic strides, and are doing everything they can to rock our steady national boat as it sails proudly onwards. Even some of our own commentators are beginning to lose courage and speak pitifully of restraint and care and cooling-down periods.
It behoves Charlie to stand firm at the helm, reject outright all cowardly calls for a trimming of sails and dispense as much largesse as he possibly can in the upcoming Budget. There is a time for restraint and a time for partying, and the latter's time is long overdue if we are truly to take our place among the nations of the (Western) world. Get, spend, more, now: to these glorious catchwords of the near-millennium we must hold fast.