Lock, stock and watering can

I have just read an article in the Sunday Times property section in which Rupert Sweeting, head of Knight Frank Country Sales, said that only about 5-10% of vendors include the house contents when they sell their home, walking out with just their clothes and personal possessions. The new owners are obviously pleased to inherit the copper warming pans, carved four-posters, rusty suits of armour (I'd be peeping inside for skeletons - what a great place to hide the victim of an old murder!), oil portraits of obscure 18th Century merchants and china tea services that may or may not have belonged to Duke Didgery of Greater Dodging.

Country piles can contain all manner of interesting collectables, but what about town and city properties? Do vendors get asked, as a condition of sale, to leave behind the non-fitted wardrobe and the horrid brown sofa? I can confirm that they certainly do.

Of course, the buy-to-let brigade might be only too happy to buy up a house or flat and all its contents, as it will save them a few bob when it comes to kitting it out for tenants - providing they all have those labels proclaiming their fire-retardant properties still attached. (I don't know if you saw the recent TV programme on the subject of house fires, but even these labels can be faked. Terrifying thought.)

But how about people who are buying a property to actually live in - a pretty rare occurrence in London at present, so it seems, when investors outnumber genuine home-hunters by at least three to one, judging by my attendance at those ghastly Open House events over the past couple of years. If you keep your ears wagging, you will soon sort out the BTLs from the OOs (owner-occupiers). Of course, some are buying a place for their progeny to occupy whilst studying at a local college, after which they will let it on the open market. Then there are those who already have a place in the country and are looking for a Monday-Friday city pad. There seem to be few people like me, who want to get their belongings out of the storage unit or, in my case right now, garden shed, and create a proper home.

At every viewing, the men in brown suits are hovering. OK, sometimes it might be a dusty grey sweatshirt but you can guarantee it will be worn over trousers that are some shade of brown, ranging from beige to Brazil nut. They hang back from the rest of the viewers and they don't speak much. Often, they take a tape measure out of pockets that are bulging with phones and wallets stuffed with notes - for this type always carries out his business via cash in hand - and proceed to measure the rooms, although the printed details already state the dimensions in feet and metres.

I know what these guys are about. They are trying to calculate where they can put up partition walls in order to cram in the maximum number of beds and tenants. Then they get out their phones, switch on the calculator and do rapid sums to see if the projected profit would make this flat or house a worthwhile addition to their portfolio. They will then sneak up to the agent and offer to line his personal pocket if he will let them have it for £20k less than the asking price. The BTL brown suits tare one extra element amongst the multitude of huge hurdles, the worst one being people with lots more money than myself who offer £20 over the asking price, that makes buying property, in London especially, so hazardous, difficult and disappointing.

But back to my original theme, that of the strange things buyers ask sellers to leave behind. I have bought and sold eleven properties. My first was a first floor maisonette in Ealing, West London. The buyers, a pair of middle-aged newly-weds, told me they would buy it if I would leave behind all the curtains, light fittings and shades, wardrobes, cooker and fridge, the piano, one of the beds and in particular - their eyes glowing with covetousness - the sofa.

Now, this being the first property I had ever owned, I hadn't developed great taste. In fact, you could say that my choice of decor was hideous. I bought the flat in 1979. The '70s were without doubt the era of brown. Especially brown with orange and yellow flowers, a hangover from '60s psychedelia (thank heavens I was too young and poor to buy a flat then!). I had toffee-coloured carpets, I had painted the walls myself in a shade that resembled brown Windsor soup (or, to be utterly accurate, watery diarrhoea) and all the woodwork was glossed in a shade called Banana. Yellow, in other words. I seem to remember the curtains were brown with orange flowers. There was a cheap wooden table parked at the end furthest from the electric fire and resplendent in the middle of the carpet was a dark brown corner unit in shiny Dralon.

Remember Dralon? If you do, the words 'static' and 'slippery' spring to mind. Dralon was a fabric you sat on then slid off. It was stuff that, having sat on it for a while, you could then stroke the cat and see the poor mog's fur stand on end. This seating unit was curved and massive, and pretty useless because, being curved, you couldn't sleep an overnight guest on it unless they liked to sleep bent like  - well, a banana. But this couple had fallen in love with the cow-pat-coloured Dralon monstrosity and that was the chief condition of their offer: no Dralon, no deal.

So I sold it to them, thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't had the trouble and cost of moving it, as it would certainly not have fitted into my next property, which was a poky, but freehold, cottage a bit further west in Northfields. A few weeks after the couple had moved in, I had a phone fall from them. Did I know the flat had woodworm? Of course I didn't. I had lagged the loft myself with rolls of fibreglass, using a nylon scarf as a face mask, and hadn't spotted single bore-hole in the rafters.

"Where was the woodworm?" I asked nervously, wondering if the staircase had collapsed and Mr Buyer was phoning from the depths of his plaster-cast.

"In the cupboard on the landing," he said accusingly. "My wife opened the door and the whole thing collapsed in a heap of dust."

"I'm really sorry," I said, shaking with suppressed laughter. "I never used that cupboard so I didn't know." I hoped the woodworm had wiggled their way into the frame of the sofa... and did they ever encounter the resident ghost, the small brown and white terrier that often appeared in the living room?

I don't think I left anything behind in the Northfields property, apart from a propensity for the drain running under the kitchen floor to block from time to time, sending a whale-spout of water up to the ceiling. I suspected it was being affected by the roots of the weeping willow in the garden, but I never said anything as it was up to their surveyor to think of things like that, wasn't it?

In 2000, I bought an end-of-terrace ex-council house in Muswell Hill with a magnificent paved and terraced garden, complete with fish-less pond. I put it up for sale 18 months later as it was at the foot of a very steep hill, up which you had to climb to reach shops and bus routes and I'd done some painful damage to the ligaments in my left ankle. A young single mum made an offer and the conditions of sale were that I included the fridge-freezer and blinds, three rugs I'd lugged back from Turkey and everything in the garden including the watering can. I was happy to oblige.

When it comes to moving house, plants can provide a sticking point. Some people like to take their favourite pots and plants with them when they move, but I have always been happy to leave them behind (as well as pianos - I have abandoned three). You can always plant another clematis or a rosemary bush. I sold a Kentish Town flat with every pot and plant on the terrace included. And my last pair of buyers, in East Finchley, wanted the wardrobe, a chest of drawers and the kitchen table, but not the beds, even though I offered them. When somebody doesn't want something, it makes you question your taste. What was wrong with my lovely pine bed frame which I had painstakingly drag-painted white, to create a calm, Zen look in the white-walled bedroom?

I sometimes wonder how long it took them to discover something else I had left behind - a redundant, rusty TV aerial sagging from the chimney, which creaked like a haunted house door every time the wind blew. I asked numerous firms to remove it for me, but nobody would, so I hope they didn't blame me for their sleepless nights. At least they couldn't blame my beds!

Flad earns his keep

I wrote this on May 19th and never got round to posting it. I thought I had, but have just found it in Draft form. Here's what I wrote, over a month ago now. Hankies at the ready...

Last night, we had to get our beloved, adorable Flad put to sleep. This has been one of the worst days of my life. I keep looking for him in all his favourite spots in the garden. I think I see him under the table, but it's only my partner's slippers. In reality, he is buried in his favourite late afternoon sunning spot, next to the rose bush planted by my partner which bears the name of his late wife, who died of breast cancer the year before I met him.

An unkind person said to me that I had no right to be so upset because it was 'only a cat'. So I want to tell Flad's story and show how he won my heart.

I still have his fur on my clothes.


It's time I resumed normal service now. Things have been pretty shitty since Flad passed away. You know how grief goes. One minute you're OK, and have been for several days, then some little thing acts as a trigger and whoosh! You're overwhelmed by a tidal wave of misery, a seventh wave that swooshes over you from behind, breaking over your head, swamping you, leaving you gasping and spluttering, battered and shaken and trying to catch your breath and keep your balance.

A moth at the window was all it took. A large one, at dusk, beating its wings against the glass of the patio doors. My mind flashed back to when we first saw Flad, leaping at the glass, catching moths and eating them. He wasn't more than seven months old. Half-grown, pot-bellied with what I first thought were kittens, but when we noticed he was male (though minus his bits) we realised the distended belly was a mixture of starvation and worms. He had been living wild, under a hedge we think, sneaking out to steal the scraps we threw out for the foxes. Poor little thing.

He was terrified of humans but my partner gradually tamed him by crouching on the grass and holding out tempting morsels that a starving kitten couldn't resist. We started leaving out a saucer of cat food and within weeks of getting proper food, his belly slimmed and his coat grew glossy and he was a different cat entirely.

We already had two adult cats, also black and white, so Flad was an add-on. Originally, I christened him Felix but his brow was a peculiar shape, giving his face a flattened look as if he'd been squashed in the birth canal - you know how some babies are born with odd-shaped heads that soon go back to normal? As Flad filled out, his face became more rounded but by then it was too late. I had called him Flathead one day and my partner seized on this name with great glee, and it stuck, though it was gradually shortened to Flad.

"He's never coming in. He's an outdoor cat," decided my partner, Mr Grumpy, even though Flad had mastered the cat flap by now, after watching BC (Bastard Cat) and Trollop to see how they did it. (Bastard, Trollop and Flathead... yes, I know!) One morning, I was first up and saw a strange sight through the glass of the side door. "What on earth's that?" I asked Mr Grumpy. It looked like two furry ears and a tail. Flad was sitting nearby, looking pleased with himself.

He burst out laughing. "It's a squirrel's arsehole!" Indeed it was. Two back legs, a tail and an, er... well, you know. Flad had eaten the rest. That night we had a peaceful night's sleep as the squirrel that had got into the inaccessible part of the attic had ceased to disturb us. Flad must have been lying in wait as Mr Squirrel shimmied down the creeper for his breakfast, straight into an open feline mouth.

"He's earned his keep," said Mr G. "I think he can come in, now." And so suddenly, there were three black and white cats on the sofa at night and no room for us at all.

Flad on the left, always the clown, and neat, tidy little Trollop

TO BE CONTINUED...

Coming soon...

Bear with me, please. It's been such a miserable week that I couldn't write a word. But I promise I'll be back soon with The Story of Flad and I'll try not to ruin my keyboard by splashing too many tears onto it.

Life is a chocolate biscuit

When I was in my twenties, I naively supposed that, once you'd got over a few bumps and knocks, life started to get better and went on that way, blossoming into a soft, perfumed bed of roses by the time you were ready to drift painlessly into the after-world.

Wrong. And how! Which is why I now feel that, rather than landing on a bed of roses in my later years, I have sunk up to my neck in a steaming dung heap! I could cry myself to sleep every night bemoaning the wrong choices I made, the opportunities I turned down, the times I've let people down, the huge amount of money I've wasted through buying clothes to cheer myself up when I've been sad.

Some people can look inside themselves and draw on reserves of strength and courage. Rather than being made of stern, stiff-upper-lip grit, my soul, psyche or whatever is more like a leaky bucket from which the courage seeps as the regret expands. Oh, stuff the similes. I have a sieve for a soul. A sponge for a backbone. A tea-strainer for a spirit. I am not the type from whom burning-building-rescues and Amazon treks are made. When the shit hits the fan, you'll find me cowering behind the sofa, whimpering plaintively, clutching a packet of chocolate digestives, my universal panacea for panic and uncertain futures. I have eaten two today already.

Recently, life has squished me deeper into the smelly stuff. Twice in the last month I have had to ring for an ambulance because Mr Grumpy has suffered TIA's, or mini-strokes. The last occasion was particularly scary because he went blind in one eye, couldn't feel the floor beneath his feet and his left arm went numb. Fortunately, he recovered later in the day, but there is always the worry that a major event is waiting in the wings. (Pass me another chocolate biscuit.)

The other rotten thing that's happened is that poor old Flad is rapidly going downhill. He's thin, weak and has started having 'accidents', so I went out today and staggered back with a bag of cat litter, a litter tray and a scoop. I have suggested shutting Flad in a room by himself at night, so that Charlie, who is a big bully, will leave him alone. We also don't want Charlie to start using the tray. But Mr Grumpy has overruled me and insists Flad should be allowed to carry on sleeping on the sofa "because that's where he likes sleeping." And he won't allow me to close the door in case Flad wants to go out at night. The fact that our poor, doddery old mog is too stiff and weak to use the cat flap hasn't occurred to him.

I give up. I'm too sad to get on with writing my books. I feel in limbo. When we first met Flad, he was a few months old and living wild in the garden, eating the scraps we threw out for the foxes. This was in July 1997, three months after Mr Grumpy and I got together. From being a nervous feral who didn't purr till he was four, he blossomed into a beautiful, gentle, lovely animal who captured my heart. Seeing him decline not only tears me in two, it throws a parallel light on my relationship.

I shall say no more. Another biscuit, please. No - give me the whole damn packet.

A gym slip

Today we had a power cut. Everything went off. I couldn't use the landline and without my computer, I was pacing the garden with nothing to do except a bit of weeding. Having no electricity made me feel helpless. I had my mobile phone, of course, and used that to ring a couple of non-local friends and have a moan. One kindly looked at a website that tells you about power cuts, but there was no mention of one in Uxbridge.

Up and down the road, burglar alarms were shrilling. Mr Grumpy was out. It was 2.15 pm. 'What on earth am I going to do with myself?' I wondered. Then up spoke the voice of my conscience. 'Go to the gym!' it ordered. 'You know you need to. You've put on 12 lbs since before Christmas, your blood pressure is up and you're not walking your 10,000 steps a day.'

I acceded to its demands, put on a pair of black leggings, found a suitable t-shirt and off I went. To my surprise, my swipe card still worked. With great embarrassment, I found myself having to ask where the female locker room was, as I had forgotten. When I got to the ladies-only gym (the mixed one is upstairs and no way am I ever going to display my crinkled old flab before the disgusted eyes of all the muscle-bound studs groaning and grunting as they lift gut-busting weights), I found there was only one other person there, a young woman pedalling away on an exercise bike whilst reading a paperback. Way to go!

I did 20 minutes on the treadmill, then 5 minutes each on exercise bikes and air walker, and then I did some leg presses. 'That will shut you up for a while, Conscience!' I thought smugly.

I needed to get the ring I wear every day repaired, as a stone had dropped out, so I visited a couple of repair places until I found someone who told me to bring it in next week. I passed the dress stall in the market and found myself buying a £10 sun dress in poisonous purple and putrid green (why, oh why?) and then... here comes the big confession... my trainers tugged me into the M&S coffee shop where I counted out the coins I had in my purse (I'd left my wallet and cards at home, in case they got nicked at the gym) and discovered I had just enough for a cappuccino and... oh no!... a thick wodge of carrot cake, for which I have a great weakness.

So I sat there piling back the calories I'd just worked off, while my conscience nagged me mercilessly and told me what a weak-willed wimp I was and that if I carried on this way, I'd never get back to 9 stone again. I sat on the bus home (should have walked the three miles but my foot was hurting in my new trainers) and felt bloated and guilty.

At least the electricity was back on by the time I got home and the freezer hadn't defrosted. I suppose I shall have to go to the gym again tomorrow now, to lose the carrot cake calories. There must be an equation here somewhere: Energy = Marks Carrot cake squared. Or rather, my waistline rounded.

Book overload!

Something went a bit wrong with my Kindle the other day. It wasn't turning on and off properly; if I turned it off, it popped back on again. Weird! So I handed it to Mr Grumpy (my partner, for anybody new on here) as he is Mr Fixit for anything mechanical.

He hummed and hawed and asked me if I had reset it lately. I told him I had (just last week and quite by accident when I hit the wrong button as I was dozing off). "Well, I'm going to do it again," he said. Then he told me I hadn't been turning it off correctly as I wasn't using the Power Off button.

Ha ha! That was my chance to score one over him, which happens as rarely as rocking-horse doo-doo. "It hasn't got one!" I said triumphantly.

"There has to be one, you just haven't found it," he said, in the tired tone of a teacher fed up with explaining something tedious to a thicko student. He turned the reader this way and that; no button. I knew there wasn't. For once, I had RTFM'd (Read The Feckin' Manual).

He gave up. By now, it had finished resetting itself. He gazed at the screen, sliding through page after page. He held it up to his face and squinted at it. "Do you know you've got eighty-five books on here?" He sounded appalled rather than astonished.

"Yes."

"How on earth are you going to read them all?"

"Easily." Three a week... twenty-one weeks' supply. Less if I go on holiday. And some are reference books that I'll only read when I need them, such as How to Format Your Book for Kindle. And there are one or two I may not like and will consign straight to the Cloud, to join The Miniaturist, which I couldn't get on with at all.

Eighty-five books hardly constitute a library. They would hardly fill three shelves. Languishing in Mr G's garden shed are at least twenty-five boxes of 'proper' books - books made of paper, touch-feely reads that seem almost sensuous when compared to the act of stabbing a cold, hard screen to turn the pages. One day I shall have my own place again. My own study, my own library. I will have my external library and my internal one, inside my Kindle. And, of course, the neatest, most portable one of all - the one inside my own head.

Torn From My Arms!

I have paraphrased the heart-rending title that appeared above the article on adoption in today's Daily Mail, in which my daughter and I had a starring role. I rushed out and bought several copies, but in fact the online version used more photos and looked better, I think.

Here is a link:

http://tinyurl.com/q38d8uu

We were asked to be on Good Morning Britain tomorrow but my daughter is down in Devon and they wanted us there at 6 am. No way! I have never been able to do early mornings. The Lorraine Show has also asked us, along with Veronica, who heads up the Movement For an Adoption Apology (MAA).

We, and many others, believe that the government, as the spokesperson for Society, did single mothers a huge disservice pre-1977, when single mums were able to get council accommodation. Prior to that, not only was there no support, either financial or with regard to housing, but we were treated like criminals. Worse, in fact. Some poor women were locked up for life in mental hospitals, branded 'moral degenerates'.

At least I escaped that fate, but I was still deemed unsuitable to bring up a child, being nothing but a 'feckless little hippy with nothing to offer a baby'. How about a mother's love? How can that be called 'nothing'?

If they want me on telly, I'll let you know.