There seems to be some strange arrangement amongst estate agents these days – they refuse resolutely to show anyone around a property if they have one to be sold that isn’t actually on the market yet. This seems such a backward way to operate. In the ‘good old days’ i.e. in my youth, one of the pleasures on a Saturday was to look at the adverts in the window of the local estate agent and decide which of the handful we would like to find ourselves living in! However, we did indeed buy a house purely on the one chance visit we made to a rather upmarket agency – they were advertising a very small development of new fully detached houses with garages . . . wooh, this was sophistication indeed, never mind the fitted carpets and radiator fed central heating to all rooms! We youngsters never actually found out how our parents managed to perform the miracle of moving us from the strange little detached ‘Dolls House’ house we lived in, a few miles away. This property was a desperate purchase a couple of years prior – our father was probably too old to get a conventional mortgage and relied on using a broker, who after a gargantuan struggle and much palm greasing, eventually managed to get Dad a 100% deal with an obscure little building society because the manager was in the same cricket team . . and our Dad was still a very useful all rounder and in charge of team selection. Yes, this was true ‘old school’ . . not what you knew, but defiitely who you knew!
Having secured the funding, we must have sold the ‘Dolls House’ to some hapless couple – my word they had their work cut out. It took our Dad excruciating amounts of time and patience to keep the place from freezing up every time it turned very cold. But it did us a good turn, as they used to say. None of this five bedroomed splendour for a one baby family. We were three children in a house with two bedrooms and one box room. The kitchen was minute – just a scullery really. However, this was home and we made the best of it!