What does your garden say about you? My ugly, scrappy plot smacks of personal failure | Grace Dent

Presently, nothing is growing in my garden, but on the upside nothing can die, which suits my fragile heart

As I stare at my garden, or, more accurately, the ugly, fly-strewn dustbowl just north of my kitchen, I feel that once again I have failed in being a proper, upstanding adult. I’m not the type, say, that one sees on an ITV1 drama talking to a detective at her suburban kitchen sink, the camera panning to a neat lawn, some roses, possibly a koi carp pond and a Swingball set; all things that signify a household under control.

My garden, utterly devoid of grass (the lawn died) or any blooming flora, does not suggest domestic bliss. My garden hints at me having a heroin problem, which is untrue, although I will require some sort of opiate sedative this weekend in order to face my spider-infested shed. Only then will I be able to retrieve my loppers and hack a rudimentary path back through the out-of-control bindweed that is plotting to strangle me in my bed. After this, I shall lie on the sofa, exhausted, mewling, full of self-pity, certain that this is not the kind of August that Jools Oliver is experiencing. I cannot forget the Olivers’ outdoors wood-fired pizza oven from the original Jamie At Home series. Or the surrounding horticultural splendour.

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What does your garden say about you? My ugly, scrappy plot smacks of personal failure | Grace Dent

Presently, nothing is growing in my garden, but on the upside nothing can die, which suits my fragile heart

As I stare at my garden, or, more accurately, the ugly, fly-strewn dustbowl just north of my kitchen, I feel that once again I have failed in being a proper, upstanding adult. I’m not the type, say, that one sees on an ITV1 drama talking to a detective at her suburban kitchen sink, the camera panning to a neat lawn, some roses, possibly a koi carp pond and a Swingball set; all things that signify a household under control.

My garden, utterly devoid of grass (the lawn died) or any blooming flora, does not suggest domestic bliss. My garden hints at me having a heroin problem, which is untrue, although I will require some sort of opiate sedative this weekend in order to face my spider-infested shed. Only then will I be able to retrieve my loppers and hack a rudimentary path back through the out-of-control bindweed that is plotting to strangle me in my bed. After this, I shall lie on the sofa, exhausted, mewling, full of self-pity, certain that this is not the kind of August that Jools Oliver is experiencing. I cannot forget the Olivers’ outdoors wood-fired pizza oven from the original Jamie At Home series. Or the surrounding horticultural splendour.

Continue reading...

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How do you choose the right solicitor? Nottingham Estate Agents

How do you go about picking the right solicitor to carry out the “conveyancing” for your property transaction? Here is our mini-guide to help ensure that the process runs as smoothly as possible. * Phone a friend Get recommendations from people you know. People are often very happy to suggest a good solicitor and just as […]

The post How do you choose the right solicitor? appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Let’s move to: Bermondsey, south-east London: a chaotic collage of its eventful past

Eighty years of change have left a cityscape that looks as if it has been put together by a vigorous game of consequences

What’s going for it? Bermondsey has been so pummelled by fortune that it looks as if it has been put together by a vigorous, acid-fuelled game of consequences. The past 80 years, in particular, have been eventful. The blitz, postwar rebuilding, deindustrialisation, the death of the docks and gentrification have left a cityscape that is collaged to a degree perhaps unequalled in this most chaotic of cities. Take a walk from its ancient heart, the old high street Bermondsey Street, past the Victorian parades of Tower Bridge Road and along Grange Walk, which once abutted Bermondsey’s abbey and 18th-century spa, and the game begins: Georgian terraces opposite 80s Brookside vernacular houses, next to 30s council flats, beside Victorian cockney terraces, facing 00s luxury apartment complexes, round the corner from 19th-century philanthropic housing. Take a right and you hit intense foodies hunting for single-estate hazelnuts at Spa Terminus food market, then repeat, repeat, repeat until you hit Peckham. On the plus side, you are never bored...

The case against It is hard to know whether this fragmentary neighbourhood comes together or remains a collage of atomised bits, but that is contemporary London for you. Lots of property speculation along the potential route of the Bakerloo line extension.

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Let’s move to: Bermondsey, south-east London: a chaotic collage of its eventful past

Eighty years of change have left a cityscape that looks as if it has been put together by a vigorous game of consequences

What’s going for it? Bermondsey has been so pummelled by fortune that it looks as if it has been put together by a vigorous, acid-fuelled game of consequences. The past 80 years, in particular, have been eventful. The blitz, postwar rebuilding, deindustrialisation, the death of the docks and gentrification have left a cityscape that is collaged to a degree perhaps unequalled in this most chaotic of cities. Take a walk from its ancient heart, the old high street Bermondsey Street, past the Victorian parades of Tower Bridge Road and along Grange Walk, which once abutted Bermondsey’s abbey and 18th-century spa, and the game begins: Georgian terraces opposite 80s Brookside vernacular houses, next to 30s council flats, beside Victorian cockney terraces, facing 00s luxury apartment complexes, round the corner from 19th-century philanthropic housing. Take a right and you hit intense foodies hunting for single-estate hazelnuts at Spa Terminus food market, then repeat, repeat, repeat until you hit Peckham. On the plus side, you are never bored...

The case against It is hard to know whether this fragmentary neighbourhood comes together or remains a collage of atomised bits, but that is contemporary London for you. Lots of property speculation along the potential route of the Bakerloo line extension.

Continue reading...

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Is this the UK’s most expensive rental property right now?

You'll need deep pockets for this beauty.

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Homes for sale in gatehouses – in pictures

Properties with an impressive entrance, from Kent to Derbyshire

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