I’m supposed to be writing a book. But I can’t stop being nosy – what does £398,000 buy you in Birmingham?
Excuse me if I seem a little distracted, but I am looking at a bungalow in a Yorkshire fishing village. It has an original, 1950s, green-tiled kitchen with a walk-in pantry and a carpet that looks like broken cornflakes. I have never been to Robin Hood’s Bay, nor do I know anyone who lives there. I haven’t inherited a lump sum from a distant, childless uncle who died while trying to fix his car on a steep slope, and £365,000 is way beyond me, even if it does have original fireplaces.
I am supposed to be writing a book. At least, that’s what I say every morning when my alarm goes off at 4.15 and I creep downstairs to type in an unheated shed for two hours before my son wakes up. Two hours? In fact, it’s probably more like an hour and a half. The rest of the time, I am on property websites, looking up houses I can neither afford nor want to live in.
Nell Frizzell is the author of Square One
