Location Location Location (2)

Bishy Road bunting

Phil and Kirstie came to town last year, and the episode featuring househunters in York was finally broadcast on Thursday night, just a few days before York was declared The Times newspaper's' best city to live in the UK. Excellent timing.

One couple were out and about with Phil on our beloved local high street, Bishy Road, and the other were with Kirstie in more outlying suburbs. Kingsway North, for example. And Acomb-Foxwood borders. Those in the know will know what I mean. The second couple (who seemed to have the energy to renovate an old lady house despite expecting a baby so must therefore be much younger than me) were actually friends of friends. That's just how York is - everybody knows everybody else via somebody else. Always and without exception.

So here were the first couple, relocating back to York from Stoke Newington in London. A very similar move to my husband and me, over a decade ago now, leaving our beloved Crouch End in search of a spare bedroom or three, off-street parking and a garden. We quickly realised that the latter two weren't going to be possible amongst the Victorian terraces of York's Southbank either, but we could at least get a four-bedroom house for less money than we sold our one-bedroom London flat for. Bishy Road wasn't nearly as trendy when we moved here (how could it be, when we weren't yet in residence?) - the shops were practical (greengrocer, butcher, baker, hardware store (AKA candlestick maker), florist) and all we needed, but there weren't any cafes other than a greasy spoon and a couple of curry houses. The Sicilian gelateria was a Bargain Booze. The Pig and Pastry was an empty shell. The Angel on the Green was a bike shop. Fine dining was an option at Melton's on Scarcroft Road, but it was a stark contrast to the other culinary fare on offer. But gradually, things have changed. The Tour de France passing through helped put us on the map, then a couple of years ago the street won "Great British High Street of the Year". It's nice that we got in on the Bishy Road property ladder while we still could, because prices have shot up and I am not sure we could have stretched even our London budget that far now.

Rowntree Park Reading Cafe

Our London couple certainly found that they couldn't. After a stroll past Costcutter, a coffee outside Trinacria and a chat with Phil in the Reading Cafe in Rowntree Park, they had a token look at a student rental on Anne Street that would have needed substantial renovation costs, before having to go further afield. They ended up buying a perfectly lovely house in Holgate, but with none of our wonderful community atmosphere on the doorstep. Kirstie (before finding her next wall to knock down) was very scathing about the need for cafes in your neighbourhood once you start a family. And she seems more obsessed than ever about couples getting ready to have children. But actually, cafe culture is alive and well on Bishy Road for families with kids. It might be hard work to get a pram in and out of the Pig and Pastry, but every establishment without exception welcomes our offspring and has something on their menu they will enjoy, whether it's the Pig's waffles with fruit and maple syrup, Trinacria's blackberry ice cream or the spring rolls in Rice Style. And the Reading Cafe has a children's book section, regular craft sessions in school holidays, and Lego Fridays. These places are our saviours and help us regain our human-ness (if not our humanity) when dealing with toddlers.

The classic Location "get them drunk and show them a cheeky offer" estate agent phonecall took place in the sunny grounds of the Principal Hotel and - sigh - York really did look lovely last summer. I had forgotten. It's been so long. I am desperate for the greenery to return to end this never-ending winter. The daffodils along the city walls are long overdue. Normally they are ablaze with colour by now. The snow would have been welcome at Christmas, but not in March. That bitter wind blowing in from Siberia every time the Beast from the East strikes makes it impossible to go and play in the white stuff anyway. I am done with being cold.

What March should look like

What March looks like this year

On Location (Location Location)

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life: for there is in London all that life can afford." (Samuel Johnson)

Location Location Location this week was one of their tedious catch-up shows. Each series Phil and Kirstie only make three properly new programmes, and then use up the rest of their six-week slot by basically repeating earlier shows, with a few minutes' update tacked on to the end. In these few minutes, they revisit whichever couple was sniffily rejecting all the amazing properties they were being shown before finally finding, finding and losing the property of their dreams, or admitting they were only pretending to be on a househunt so they could be on telly and nose round some fancy houses.

This week they were back in southwest London with a pair of identical twin (refraining from rhyming slang) bankers, and a lone solicitor from the northeast who had persuaded her daddy to buy her a London flat. The twin bankers were obsessed with buying a tiny Victorian conversion off Clapham High Street even though they were both about seven feet tall and the bedrooms were, as Kirstie said, just about big enough to swing a cat in, provided you didn’t want any piece of furniture other than a bed in them. There's no denying Clapham is a great location (apart from it being full of bankers), but there are much nicer, greener parts than the high street. The twins were shown a much bigger pad in Pimlico, but it did have a rather terrifying view of the railway lines (in literal spitting distance) heading into Victoria. And it was ex-local authority, which clearly did not sit well in our city slickers’ minds. The catch-up segment revealed that they eventually backed out of the flat purchase in Clapham and decided to buy one in Balham instead, one stop down the Northern Line. You got the impression that they saw Balham as slumming it, which means that they definitely do not live on my London planet.

Clapham High Street

The northeast solicitor eventually gave up hope of a home in millionaire’s playground Wimbledon Village for her tiny budget (funny that) and also ended up slumming it, this time in Tooting. Tooting is even more of a comedown from Clapham, since it’s an extra stop down the Northern Line from Balham. And I also lived there for a year, moving from Clapham and missing Balham out entirely. The scene of the deal negotiation (where Kirstie and Phil get their client drunk enough to agree to pay the necessary odds) was the Leather Bottle pub in Earlsfield, where I had many a pint on my way to the Wimbledon Dogs, and where, after three bottles of white rioja shared with a friend, it earned itself a blue plaque on the wall for being the only place in the world I have ever thrown up as a result of too much alcohol.

When Location Location Location  features property hunting in London (which it does a lot, since that’s presumably the easiest journey to work for Phil and Kirstie), it always makes us so glad we don’t live there any more. Finding a room to rent in a London flatshare was stressful enough, but buying a flat was even worse, when you couldn’t believe quite what estate agents were having the nerve to show you for your scarily limited but still extortionate budget. A flat above a takeaway, upwind from its ventilation hoods. A flat with boarded-up windows (“ever since the fire”). A flat whose ground floor was entirely derelict from a long-abandoned building project. A skull hanging in a stairwell. A conversion where the only place to fit a kitchen was inside a cupboard. A flat in a purpose-built block which seemed within budget until the estate agent mentioned the £4,000 a year service charge. A flat with sitting tenants so cross about having the roof sold above their heads that they would leave their filthy underwear all over the floor during viewings. Oh no, wait a minute. That was us.

It seems that these days, despite the rest of the country still being in a property nosedive and recession, flats in London are once again flying off the market at ridiculous prices. So the bankers with rhyming slang in full may have bankrupted us, but they can still live where they like, while the rest of us are pushed ever further away from the city. Johnson may have a point, but if life cannot afford anywhere to hang its hat, you have to go elsewhere.