Sucked

I've been sucked into the national obsession with property, because we've been trying to sell our house since April, and really, really need it to happen now.

It was bad enough anyway, but the obsession is being fed now by fucking hundreds of cheap television programmes, all to do with buying houses, selling houses, doing up houses, all with the ultimate aim of making money. In a nation that doesn't make anything, the only way to make any dough is to artificially inflate house prices so you can cash in and buy a new car. Partly, these programmes seem to satisfy some kind of need, whereby people no longer feel they actually have to go look at houses.

First of all, mmkay, it's immoral, in my view, to buy a house purely to make money. When you think of the poverty that still exists in this country, the homelessness, the sink estates, for the middle classes to be happily buying cheap houses just to "do them up" and sell them on is plain wrong.

Dear landlord,
Please heed these words that I speak.
I know you've suffered much,
But in this you are not so unique.
All of us, at times, we might work too hard
To have it too fast and too much,
And anyone can fill his life up
With things he can see but he just cannot touch

And while I think it's best to buy once, not before your thirties, and stay in that house, of course I am moving this year for about the 13th or 14th time in 25 years. Crazy but true. I hate hypocrisy, naturally, but I'm always prepared to make an exception in my own case.

Moving swiftly on, perhaps the worst thing about all these moving houses programmes is that they create unrealistic expectations in people. It's like those gardening makeovers, where they show you 4 people doing something over 30 minutes that actually took 12 people to do over several days. People turn up at your door expecting you to have redecorated in neutral Magnolia throughout, with tasteful new furniture and tasteful ornaments, complete with the latest aspirational luxury items like taps with little hose attachments and Dualit toasters and coffee machines.

You really do feel as if you are dealing with people who will not buy your house if they don't like your ornaments and picture frames. Television has dulled their minds so that they don't even possess the imagination of a squashed squirrel. They walk in, and if they don't see exactly what they saw on TV the night before, they walk away muttering.

Ironic, because one of the programmes is called "Location Location Location," which is supposed to be the three most important things to consider when buying a house. Now, I happen to think our house is perfectly located, which is why we bought it in the first place. But people just ain't thinking right.

Bastards.