Peter York: The Way We Live Now

Brits have been going everywhere for ever. As explorers, then soldiers, colonial administrators, global corporate types and NGO types. And as tourists, poor and rich. The recent rich ones go to those beautifully re-worked princely hotels in India. Just enough Maharaja, but plumbing and broadband and Kensington detailing. The same people have been going to faraway Hispanic places recently too (rather than lovely Spain, because it’s so near). And they’ll have done the smart Old South in the USA too.

And everyone augments and substitutes, looking at glorious plutography – pictures of the life and houses of happy, well-balanced rich people, living the simple outdoor life, or lounging in one of their many houses, somewhere sunny. All these places and settings feature some kind of veranda affair. We Brits almost think we invented the veranda, in the way we feel all sorts of Indiana is ours, from Benares brass to Rajasthan tables. And who is to say we're entirely wrong, because later Indian architecture is very hybrid and East-meets-Westy, and there's a fair bit of Spanish and Portuguese in it too. But wherever it came from, it's clear enough how it works and why we like it.

The veranda makes a nice transitional space between inside and outside. There's fresh air – an English fetish – but shelter too, against the Mad Dog sun and the rain. It's different from a terrace (open, paved space between house and garden), a balcony (narrow, uncovered) and a conservatory. It's got the best of everything and, in spring, you can have lunch there. How gorgeous. And there's a strong association here – how exactly to say this? – with the kind of lunch that gets brought to you.

You'd expect to see a veranda in Britain on a certain kind of big Edwardian Thameside house in the Home Counties. There'd be some mooring, a gently sloping garden and, up some wide wooden steps, a huge veranda. Or, of course, a cricket pavilion. It's a certain kind of English sensibility that sees a cricket pavilion as the high point of civilisation. It could be Railway Children-style (stripes, faded florals, sun-bleached mahogany), or exotic (cane, rattan and bamboo, bright blue and yellow paint) or pristine clapboard Americana, which involves a lot of white-painted wood.

This is a veranda in the American style. It could've been constructed yesterday or in the mid-19th century, it's such a vernacular style. It certainly looks as if it'd been painted yesterday. It looks tremendously co-ordinated and very soothing, a good foil for those luridly bright clothes smart Americans wear when they're doing formal informality. Those of us without large, sun-dappled gardens and water frontages might come to mock – but it'd be nice to be asked to stay to lunch.