Me and my property porn

Okay, so here’s a confession for you. My name’s Mrs Dubai, and I’m addicted to property.

At first I thought it was normal, healthy even, to browse magazines and websites full of beautiful properties, ogling spiral staircases, infinity pools, floor-to-ceiling windows, ocean views and kitchens so white you’d need a degree just to figure out where the door openings were.

Doesn’t everyone dream about houses? Doesn’t everyone look at a picture of a gorgeous property and imagine themselves living in it? Imagine the life they’d lead if they lived in that beachfront mansion in the British Virgin Islands / farmhouse in the Majorcan mountains / ranch in Texas / brownstone in New York city / penthouse in Chelsea / state-of-the-art apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour?

Doesn’t everyone let their eyes glaze over and dribble just a little bit as they view pictures of a clapboard beach house in the Hamptons and imagine themselves, limbs warmed from a day in the sun, coming up off the beach for sundowners on the sea-facing deck as the ocean changes from white-capped turquoise to the dark, shifting indigo of evening?

Don’t they?

So, when DH brought the latest property porn magazine back from England, I couldn’t stop talking about it to my friends. In full grip of my addiction, I emailed them details of a couple of spectacular properties here in Dubai.

One replied, “Agree plot’s a bit cramped. Worried about you. Do you have a problem with property porn?” and I realised that not everyone – not even my friends who quite like houses – imagine 25 different lives a day; lives in which you’re running a B&B in France; commuting from a farmhouse in Jersey to your children’s Cotswolds boarding school; writing best-sellers from your beach house in Mauritius; splitting your time between the pad in Mayfair and the sprawling finca in Majorca; holidaying in your $8million pad in Thailand; parking your speedboat outside your island home off Abu Dhabi; or living with 10 white-clothed servants in a colonial villa in Sri Lanka.

This is "Indisch", my dream home in Sri Lanka. You can rent it for holidays. See all the glorious pix here: http://villasinsrilanka.com/property/indisch/

Goodness knows, when I’m browsing a property website, I even figure out where the children would go to school (no wonder the novel’s not written).

If I have time, and the price isn’t utterly ridiculous, I also work out the mortgage repayments and send the details to DH (who I’m sure bins them without opening them). In the evening, I’ll thrust print-outs of interiors and exteriors, pools , terraces, sea views, free-standing, ocean-facing bathtubs and large, gleaming kitchens into his hands.

Then, having exhausted myself going through the imaginary details of what I’d cook at the imaginary dinner parties when my imaginary friends came to visit my imaginary house, I look at our floodlit pool in the backyard; I look at our lovely terrace, our garden furniture, our plantation shutters and our smart white kitchen, and I think, you know what? I’m happy here. I really love our house. If I saw it in a property magazine, I’d want to buy it, too.