Property

If it takes any longer to find a buyer for my London flat I am going to start coming to the conclusion that it is perfect for me in my old age. Forget moving to a cottage with a vertiginous staircase in the inhospitable countryside, this two-bedroom apartment minutes from the hustle and bustle is just the thing for an aging couple like the builder boyfriend and me. ‘Think about it,’ said the BB the other evening, as we sat in my cosy living room, he nursing the usual aches and pains he brings home after a hard day on a roof. ‘This is just what we need. It’s handy for shops and services and it’s all on one level so I can limp around as my dodgy hip gives out.’ He’s right.

Unexpectedly re-available is a very good phrase. I have often seen it applied to house advertisements and thought how fabulously impertinent it sounds, so I am asking the agents to attach it to the description of my flat now that it is back on the market after a right old hoo-ha with the buyer from hell. Unexpectedly re-available is a grammatical tongue-twister, and a euphemism that manages to be both enigmatic and facetious at the same time. I also like it because it speaks to me on a personal level. I have been unexpectedly re-available countless times and I wish I had thought of saying so whenever I went on one of those dreadful dating websites. Unexpectedly re-available, due to time wasters. Well appointed, in good decorative order. Traditional yet versatile.

Fine, so I got it completely wrong. It turns out the sale of my flat was not held up by a wiggle in the garden, but by a kink in the kitchen. This kink in the kitchen is far more serious than a wiggle in the garden. I should have realised that, the buyer’s solicitor has complained. I don’t know why I got the idea that exchange of contracts had been delayed by a mistake in the plan for the garden, but I’m struggling to keep up. I’ve been deluged with complaints about absolutely everything I had thought was fine. From the crisp new electrical safety certificates to the diligently maintained boiler service history, nothing has been good enough.

The problem holding up my house move turns out to be a wiggle. Have you ever had a wiggle? It sounds jolly enough but, believe me, you don’t want to go there. If you have a wiggle in your garden, you had better be prepared for the worst. I had no idea about this wiggle, because when I bought the flat I only had my lawyer scrutinise the Land Registry documents to a normal degree, which is to say I asked him if everything was broadly all right, and when he confirmed that it was I told him to proceed. I have lived in the flat quite happily since 2002 and I have never had any trouble at all with the boundary lines. I fix the garden fencing one side, the neighbour takes care of the other.

Gstaad  New Year’s Eve was a Rhapsody in Blue, with a clarinet glissando that promised joys to come, and the Gershwin downbeat not registering until 6 a.m. The hangover was, of course, Karamazovian, but who the hell cares. I am finally solid again, and even the flu I caught on the trip over is on its last legs, lingering and as annoying as EU regulations, but no longer to be taken seriously. I had lots of close friends for dinner, but the new chalet was packed by the time I began slurring. Mind you, it’s during dreamlike moments such as those between midnight and dawn that wisdom strikes: there is something very wrong with people’s values around these parts.

If you're planning on buying a second property this year, then help is at hand thanks to Spectator Money. Stamp duty costs, mortgage tax relief changes and the possible impact of Brexit are just a few things to consider when buying a second home, a holiday home or a buy-to-let in 2017. Price versus Value 'Location, location, location'. This age-old saying still speaks volumes. When searching for a property, you'll benefit in the long run if you do your homework at the outset. Infrastructural changes have a direct knock-on effect with property prices, as does the weather and local amenities, such as roads, schools and shops. If you can search out areas that have plans to undergo development and renovations, you could find a property that will hold high future value.

‘We’re going to have not just consumers represented on company boards, but workers as well,’ Theresa May declared in July. ‘I can categorically tell you that this is not about… the direct appointment of workers or trade union representatives on boards,’ she corrected herself in her CBI speech last month. ‘It will be a question of finding the model that works.’ But is there such a thing? The case was set out in a recent TUC paper, All Aboard, which argues that worker participation would encourage ‘a long-term approach to decision-making’ and ‘help challenge groupthink’.

I hate gentrification; my area was so much cooler when there were people openly selling drugs on the high street, my neighbours' house had a mattress outside and the nice restaurants needed bouncers so the diners weren't constantly harassed by crack addicts. Now it's all just nice coffee shops, other broadsheet readers and arthouse cinemas. But don't worry, for the Mayor of London is on the case, launching an inquiry into how much London land is being bought up by overseas investors and, as the Guardian reports, 'the scale of gentrification and rising housing costs in the capital'.

What is happening to estate agents? Or let me put it another way. If the professional classes thought they were going to escape unscathed from ‘free movement of people’ then they were wrong. I feel it is only fair to warn the office workers and the suited and booted that their salaries are no longer safe from the Eurovision job contest. I know this because I have been trying to sell my flat for a while and a part of the problem has been that the agent put in charge of selling it was a young girl who, while sweet, lacked the ideal vocab range. I overheard her doing a viewing one day: ‘This is sitting room, where you can sit. This is bathroom, for take bath. This is bedroom where you can make sexy-time.