A snooty waiter with a derisive French accent: the perfect complement to our meals. The three of us, young men, all straight, enjoying the possibility of a romantic dinner without the tantalising terror of carnal tension. The established conditions of design-based romance were all there; dim lighting, wooden tables, candles, comprehensive wine lists with fine local selections. However, these were somewhat unbalanced by terrible 1990s house music, neighbouring tables at close quarters, and the ribald frenzy of cheap meats.

Why cheap meats? The ambiguous delicacies of the bourgeois era, I suppose. Like polenta, and gin. These were the staples of the poor. Polenta was the grain of choice for the Italian peasantry, abandoned in a rush once rising living standards offered the kingly meal of pasta. Gin was the poison of the Indian underclass; in Rushdie novels, the alcoholic shakes are called the djinns. However, don't go looking for polenta in any establishment short of tablecloths; and don't expect to pay less than a half-hour's wage for a decent g&t. Now, the spectacular coup de grace: goat pizza. Fucking goat. They breed like crazy, they eat anything, they're muscle-bound and tough as all hell. The halal butcher near my house sells goats at tiny prices, whole. Goat pizza? It's the moment where the pseudo-aristocratic middle class can gather around their coal-fuelled electric heaters and feel rustic. Then jump in their utility vehicles and drive back to the suburbs. I didn't have the goat, of course; meat, cheap or no, is not my thing. Besides, surely cheap meats are valued for their defining cheapness: expensive cheap meats are just a symptom of the bizarre, class-reversal simulacra that feeds us not just with food but with universal social meaning.

We paid far too much for these meals, the money spent not on the satisfaction of our hungers but of our curiosity. Afterwards, we left the leafy inner-urban ghetto and returned to the warehouse-laden, industrial enclave from whence we came. This trip we made by foot.

We crossed the vacant intersections, and walked underneath the apartment balconies. We slipped through the corners, and weaved our way past the golf course. We ducked by the train station and moved across the river.

Along the way, we stopped, gazing. Our route was lined with ostentation. Mansions filled the inner-urban streets; water-features, birds' castles, steeples and complicated video security systems. It is not the accumulation of wealth that is so fascinating here, but its manifestation - here, in these houses, is wealth. We stand on the street, confronting affluence. We, of student scholarships and office-drone low-incomes, are able to witness money.

We were freeloading. People in impoverished countries may not ever get to see such beauty. And it is beautiful, despite its wastefulness. Some of these houses are blocks of artistic glory. The extravagance - this space, this much material, houses so few - is palpable, but in no way impacts upon the splendour. Extravagant is a word rarely used as an insult, and I can be in absolute awe of what so disappoints me. As we walked back to our dilapidated cottage, without spending any money or earning any respect, we could be taken in by art of wealth dispersed.

And so we live in a rich country, where even we of little means can be rich. We can walk through these places, we can be inspired and disgusted and more. These mansions don't just belong to them; they belong to all of us, in a way. The legacy, the idea, of these houses is something we share.

We're lucky, I guess.