Excess is a garment

It's hard to find your feet as you drift in and out of the TV channels showing  perhaps how the mega rich spend their time and money on holiday and the next moment you are in a grotty run down house being appalled by the emotional 'sink hole' in which some of our dysfunctional families live their lives.  On an even different scale one sees a documentary of people living/dying in a hell hole like Somalia and the scale of human suffering rises like some seismic event on the Richter Scale.

From a hotel suite in London costing £25.000 per night to people boiling grubs and leaves in an effort to stay alive.

Decades ago the life style of Mr and Mrs Rothschild was as opaque as a black hole event in the universe. We were oblivious to the disparity in our lives and when perhaps we read in a magazine of the opulence of a class of people who we would never meet, at least we had the option of not buying the magazine.

Now a days sitting in the corner of our lounge, beaming out its mirrored views of life in all its gory detail, we are like moths to a light, attracted by the opportunity to peek in at what others do, how they live and instinctively, measure the contrast between us  and them.

The thought of spending over £25.000 for one nights accommodation seems surreal, it's beyond our comprehension that people can spend money like that. We all at times fantasise what we would do with a decent Lottery win but at £25.000 for a room, for the night, your Lottery money wouldn't go far.

The rich middle to older people who revelled on the exclusive high roller cruse ship or spent three weeks in a private resort on one of the islands in the Seychelles, all seemed to have  the same criteria, their money bought "exclusivity" and demanded that they got "bang for their buck". Their thrill came from the sound of the champaign cork popping and a swig of bubbly to wash down the caviar, that and the attendant obsequious service from the minions, attendant to their every whim.

It's like a passport to another planet. The opulent are stereotyped with their watches and handbags, their caviar and their total disregard for the real world around them. It is as if having made the dosh you are petrified of anyone not knowing you have it. Excess is a garment never to discard for fear that people will see how shallow and inconsequential your life has really become.