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

Inside The Commons

I have seen two episodes of this fascinating insight of life in the House of Commons. It all makes me conclude that York's famous son Guido Fawkes rather had a point. Now, I am not saying Parliament should be blown up - the building is far too beautiful for that. But with its miles of panelled corridors, archaic language, poky offices, mountainous paperwork and impenetrable systems, it's an establishment that definitely needs a colossal shake-up: a political revolution akin to the agitation of a snow globe or the frantic ripping of a box of confetti.

For it's an institution where applause is considered "a bit too modern". Voting is done by a head count in a lobby. Passed laws are signed off in Norman French, tied up in green ribbon and carried on foot to the Lords. Private Members' Bills to be introduced to the House are selected by something resembling a tombola. Booking a debate slot involves camping. And there are lots of silly costumes.

Snuff is on offer, but it's apparently not "weapons grade". I should think not. Who knows what the sniffer dogs checking the place out before Prime Minister's Questions would make of that, with their (as the narrator wryly remarks) "eyes to the left and their nose to the floor"? Although the dogs are more likely to root something out than the Yeoman of the Guard's ritual romp through the cellars before the State Opening of Parliament. The Yeomen are supposedly checking the basement for gunpowder, but it's so dusty down there I doubt they'd spot any gunpowder before it blew their noses off. If the snuff hadn't taken their nostrils out already, that is.

Parliament from the London Eye

David Cameron claims Parliament is half church, half museum and half school. Other than thinking, "Do your maths, David", he is certainly right about the school bit. It is full of sixty-year-old Tory toffs behaving like 1950s Etonians, with their toy wooden swords (well, OK, just the one) hanging from pink ribbon in the cloakrooms and Gladys in the tea room as a substitute Matron. ("I adore her," sighs Sir Nicholas Soames MP wistfully.) You wouldn't be surprised to find Michael Gove dunking some whip-defiant new boy's head down the toilet.

Some dub it Hogwarts, with the robed Clerk of the House Robert Rogers as Dumbledore, but it seems far from magical to me. The roof is leaking for one thing. Bills don't get passed because Jacob Rees-Mogg (in his Harry Potter glasses) always turns up to philibuster, wasting hours of Parliamentary time and a lot of taxpayers' money. It's nothing to do with charms or curses, although I expect there are a fair few other MPs muttering the latter. But like the Great Hall at Hogwarts, the terrace cafe serves a good porridge, provided you can find your way to it. There is no Marauders' Map available here. Don't let constantly looking at your phone for that all-important tweet lead you astray. The wifi is rubbish anyway.

And church? Yes. The MPs sit on pews. Or some of them do. 200 of them have to stand in the aisles. The rest come in early for morning prayers, but that's only to bag themselves a seat. Think of all the extra work the MPs could get done if they got Kirstie Allsopp in to knock down a few walls. Then there would be enough chairs for everyone and MPs could just rock up a few minutes before the start of a debate. Although the Commons only properly fills up for the Budget or Prime Ministers' Questions. Half the time key issues are being debated to an empty house, and Dennis Skinner.

Museum? There's an antique cigar lighter fixed to the wall and a statue at every turn. The archive shelving is phenomenal, and they're still only making part of Hansard electronic. There are tea urns and piles of porcelain painted with portcullises stored behind a mystery door that has to be broken into by locksmiths. The ceremony of the State Opening of Parliament is full of ritual rather than relevance.

The State Opening of Parliament is the only time when the two main party leaders seem to have a jovial conversation, as Black Rod leads them across from the Commons to the Lords for the Queen's Speech. What do they talk about? Their kids, says Ed Miliband, and how to fit a young family around the pressures of political life. I would sympathise, but I bet they have staff.

What is striking is how at home the Tories look in the tea room. Yet for 13 years New Labour were in power, and they barely seem to have left a mark on the place. Presumably they gave up and went over the road to the new-build Portcullis House to hang out in the atrium coffee shop instead. And while New Labour won't offer to let a female MP sit on their lap like longest-serving Tory Peter Tapsell, they will tell her that she has "unparliamentary hair".

Morning stroll by the Thames before work in 1999.
Portcullis House is still under construction.

The behaviour of many politicians is criticised by their own. "Disgusting," says Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham. "Pathetic" says Charles Kennedy, who I didn't even realise was still in Parliament. "Penis", says Penny Mordaunt, but that's another matter. Champion and Kennedy are referring to shenanigans during Prime Minister's questions - the jeering, and the practice of "free hits", where the Prime Minister e-mails out choice questions to his own MPs in advance, things that when asked will supposedly show him in a good light.

A lot of these MPs do genuinely want to make a difference, but I am not sure how many manage it. The system defeats them at every turn. Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow (eight miles from where I grew up), is trying to get hospital car parking charges abolished, which rather goes against his party policy. Just as it's allowed to be debated in Parliament, George Osborne offers Halfon a job so that he can't actually speak in the House about it. And in the wake of the child grooming scandal in Rotherham, Sarah Champion wants an amendment which would allow offenders to be prosecuted at first contact. Her suggestion is shot down by Tories in committee but subsequently put in by them in their own words. Champion is simply delighted that the law is changed, even if she gets no credit whatsoever for her hard work. She has in fact made a difference.

This programme has certainly quelled any Parliamentary ambitions I may have had. I can't say that they were especially burning in the first place. But I know I could not function in a world like this. It would make me want to scream. Apart from the blond twat on a bike running the shop, I would probably fare better down the river at City Hall, where there is seemingly a more modern, transparent and almost European approach to government.

View from the Monument towards City Hall (far right)

But I do love the Houses of Parliament building. It's my absolute favourite in London, if not in Britain, if not the world. I have been inside it just the once, when I took my mum on a guided tour for her birthday present one year. It was in Blair's heyday, so a very long time ago now. The security checks to let us in were fairly immense. But the tour was fascinating, albeit biased. We followed the Queen's State Opening route through the Robing Room into the House of Lords, which has to be one of the most beautiful chambers I have ever seen. And the House of Commons is surprisingly small. It really is extraordinary that it's supposed to seat 650 people. Although it does have an upstairs, which is used by the Press and invited members of the public. You don't see the gallery on TV, because the cameras are fixed to the balcony. They should, if they're not prepared to let Kirstie knock down those walls, think about moving into the much larger Westminster Hall next door, which seems to be mostly used for concerts and the occasional lying in state. Surely the coffins could go in the Commons instead? Best place for them, if this programme is to be believed.

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.