‘Must haves’ in life and I haven’t got any of them

10:40am Monday 21st July 2008

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IF anyone asked me to name a ‘must-have’, I would be torn between ‘air’ and ‘water’. Food would also be a close contender.

Yet, whenever I receive a list of must-haves – and I regularly do in my line of work – these life-sustaining things are nowhere to be seen.

Instead, the most bizarre items appear, all of which must, in some way, be crucial to our survival.

A mottled granite worktop in my kitchen, a Hamilton Beach 43421 FlavourPlus 10-cup programmable coffee maker with prewet cycle, a Trevi Outline shower valve, a Zaha Hadid cutlery collection, and a Belle Maison Corbeille bed, a KitchenAid Artisan food mixer, in cream, of course, and an Egyptian cotton duvet cover from The White Company.

I am constantly being told that I must have these things, and am trying desperately hard to get them, yet I keep runing into problems. Mostly, I can’t afford them – we are living in desperate times after all – and those I can afford, having re-mortgaged the house, have proved elusive. I have had to resort to buying the next best thing.

I don’t know how visitors to my home are going to react when they discover that my FlavourPlus programmable coffee maker is only 8-cup. It is too awful to imagine. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t invite more than eight of them at once, and keep them out of the kitchen (which will be better anyway, as they won’t notice that I don’t have the granite worktop).

‘Must-have’ is the buzzword of the moment. You can’t open a magazine or turn on the TV without seeing the phrase. It appears that there are must-haves for every room in the house. There are must-haves for your make-up bag – who can possibly leave home without the Real Hair Masque, a tub of Nude Moisturising Body Polish and a bottle of Escentric 02? There are must-haves for your wardrobe, even your garden.

And, unbelievably, this week I received a list of – and I have the document to prove it – ‘fridge must-haves.’ Drawn up by two celebrity cooks, it includes a lump of pecorino cheese, smoked salmon, pata negra free range ham, champagne, and blueberries.

I am ashamed to confess that I don’t possess any of these fridge must-haves. I am going to have to rush to Sainsbury’s and stock up, although I suspect that some of these items may languish among the foods that get left uneaten at the back and go off, to be found only when we carry out an investigation as to why there is a bad smell.

Sometimes I feel I am being slowly brainwashed into thinking that to carry on living normally I must surround myself with these must-haves. Yet I try to believe that in my kitchen a must-have would be a kettle, cooker and washing-up bowl – and no particular make either, who needs an Aga when you can make perfectly decent nosh on an Asda.

The world has gone mad. Yet, just as I was about to take out another loan for a must-have iPhone, I checked out one website, ‘Five must-haves for your house – torch, ladder, basic tool kit, fire extinguisher and battery charger.’ There is hope for us yet.