And if I had such a house, I would furnish it with the appropriate, period furniture.

Up to a point, of course . . . I'd have modern comforts like squishy sofas and orthopaedic beds. But I'd be careful, for example, with paintings and floor tiles and the dining room table. I'd go to a lot of trouble to get things that were right for the proportions and colours and textures of an old house. It would be a pleasure to learn enough to get it right.

And the gardens, too . . . I'd keep going with whatever had gone on there in the past. No petunias.

What's wrong with that? What's wrong with recognising the beautiful things around and wanting to possess them? The best houses and the best furniture and the best gardens in Ireland once belonged to the gentry. Of course they did. Most of us, the rest of us . . . including, of course, every last one of my own forebears . . . had nothing.

But why, because certain experiences were the province of a once-ruling class, should I not desire to have them? Why?

What was Charlie Haughey supposed to do with the money that rolled in during his public life (leaving aside where it rolled in from)? Was he supposed to make an offer on a three-bed Donnycarney terraced house? Maybe get it pebbledashed? Splash out on a modest extension? A sliding patio door? A cobblelock driveway for the Toyota Corolla?

This is a serious question. How exactly, according to the rules of the snobby tastegauleiters, are modern Irish people, who happen to have money and the desire to express themselves, allowed to do it?

Why is it a sin to want a more beautiful house than the one you grew up in?

And what kind of craven, post-colonial self-distrust makes it all right to buy or hope to buy a villa in, say, Tuscany . . . a house which once belonged to a dominant class, and whose aesthetic is utterly distant from anyone Irish . . . but not all right to buy one of Ireland's own fine houses?

Even Olivia O'Leary, usually so wellbalanced, was at it. Charlie, she wrote, "needed to ape the belted earls". I don't know what a belted earl is, but Charlie wasn't aping anyone. Charlie had his own accent, his own interests and his own eclectic tastes which included putting an Irish pub into Abbeville and included the golden eagle and included a zest for the language of a gurrier and included a real interest in horseriding and included both bad and good art. CJH put his lifestyle together with a confidence more of us should display. You want aping, go down to the courts and listen to the fake British accents that a few years in the Law Library magically confer on Irish barristers.

Eddie Holt was at it, too. He lit into Charlie for getting a picture taken of himself in riding gear on a horse, looking as if he was posing for an equestrian statue.

But riding horses is a perfectly natural thing to do . . . rural Ireland is full of people who've always been knowledgeable about horses and think nothing of sprucing the horse and themselves up for a county show.

What should Charlie have done . . .

suppressed his love for horses so as not to infringe the mean rule that dictates that the only relationship someone from the Dublin working class should have with horses is to bet on them? Why? And what does Eddie Holt think Charlie should have worn on horseback? Jeans?

CJH also brought out a lower middle class prissiness in Matt Cooper. "Many found the public flaunting of his lifestyle . . .

the horses, the expensive clothes and fine dining . . . to be ostentatious. . ." Many who?

Not me, Matt. Listen, the man had millions to play with. You want him to eat fish fingers? Speaking for myself, I do as much fine dining as I possibly can and I would pay a fortune for my clothes if I had a fortune. Whence all this knee-jerk puritanism? And how come nobody points a finger at the Fine Gaelers in their beigecarpeted red-brick mansions in Shrewsbury Road and Palmerston Park?

How come nobody says it would become Enda Kenny to behave a bit more like Gandhi?

The point is that there are problems of style and taste in any society on its way out of plainness and poverty. The main thing, it seems to me, is to relish learning about food and drink and houses and the natural world and music and painting and design . . .

all the things from which you construct your daily environment . . . and then, according to what your resources are, to have the courage to make your footprint.

Give Charlie this much due . . . he didn't care when he was alive what people thought of him and he certainly doesn't care now. In the area of not caring what other people might think of his taste, he set, for once, a good example.