Tag: Waitrose

A Knight’s Tale (48: The Housing Market)

In those days I was able to buy our first house together for £5,000. It is not just inflation that has meant that the, albeit refurbished, house sold for £1,200,000 earlier this year.

In 1968, 76 Amity Grove was a small semi-detached three-bedroomed Victorian house with one bathroom and combined WC added through a door in the kitchen – an arrangement which would not be permitted today. The first of these images is from 2014 when it was sold for £745,000; the second from 2020 when it was again on the market to be sold in 2021 for the price mentioned above. The still extant picket fence is a rarity in this suburban street because perhaps two thirds of the front gardens have now been sacrificed to the ever advancing motor car.

When we were young it was only possible to obtain a mortgage on the basis of one salary. Once two salaries could be taken into account it became inevitable that prices would increase; and as a consequence, for ordinary people this meant two incomes were needed. This was one contributory factor in a radical change in family life during the 20th century. When two parents both worked child care was required to be found, and often funded from extra earnings.

We could only obtain such a loan for a house purchase if it was to be our permanent residence. Later in that century buyers were permitted to borrow such money under “Buy to Let”, which effectively meant that tenants were paying the buyer’s mortgage costs. My son, Michael, was a beneficiary of this system. This has pushed up the price of rentals and made most young people unable to save for a purchase deposit.

In the case of our first house, Estate Agents raised the social image by changing the name of this side of the railway line from Raynes Park to West Wimbledon – a much more salubrious address for the high fliers who could commute to London’s Waterloo in 18 minutes by train. The addition of a Waitrose helped promote the uplift.

When, in 2008, I was seeking rental accommodation in London after my return from Newark I discovered that the tenancy of 29a Stanton Road, the maisonette in which I had grown up, was on offer for £1,400 per month. I am not sure what my parents’ rent amounted to, but I don’t expect that in the 1950s it was much more that £1 per week.

Imperial Knob Screws

The garden was looking very inviting today, blossom, such as apple and ornamental cherry abounding, but the house itself remains a priority for our attention.
Flo is coming a day earlier, so we set out early to B & Q, the national DIY company originally set up by Messrs Block & Quayle in Southampton in 1969. Marks & Spencer’s, is of course, another large national outlet known by its founders’ initials. Our high streets are also graced by C & A and H & M stores; the first being the first name initials of the Dutch entrepreneurs who founded the store in 1841, and the second from the surnames of Swedes Hennes & Mauritz in 1947. C and A were Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer. As Michael Caine famously claims never to have said, ‘not a lot of people know that’.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes. B & Q.
We went in search of curtain rails and the missing screws from the door knobs that fell off on 31st March. Jackie found the curtain rails whilst  I rummaged through rows and rows of screws, bolts and nuts seeking something that might possibly fit the bar I had in my pocket. I only found two fittings that might vaguely serve the purpose. Both were too long. I reported to one of the check-out desks to ask if they had any more. The helpful young lady put out an SOS on the tannoy asking someone from hardware to come and assist me.
Now there’s a word to conjure with. Tannoy.
Tannoy is a Scottish -based loud speaker and public address system manufacturing company. Never having any idea who has installed the particular system we are listening to, we always call such a facility ‘the tannoy’. Just as a vacuum cleaner is always a ‘hoover’ and a ball-point pen ‘a biro’. Even Google, the search engine that provided me with the information on Tannoy, is now a noun to be found in dictionaries.
Ah, yes. B & Q.
Clive soon appeared and rummaged, equally unsuccessfully, with me. He announced that they didn’t do them, and suggested Castles, ‘an old-fashioned ironmongers’. Jackie and I didn’t know where Castles was, but she had googled ironmongers the night before, and knew there was one in Lymington. So off we drove to Lymington, which, incidentally is in the opposite direction to Christchurch. There Jackie, having done her usually successful google walk didn’t quite get a turning right in the car, and moreover wasn’t sure of the name. We ended up at Crystals at the far end of the High Street. It wasn’t possible to park there, so Jackie continued on round the one-way system to Waitrose, where she went shopping whilst I back-tracked to the hardware shop. There a very helpful young woman directed me to Central Southern Security just past the railway station at the other end of the street. I knew this because we had passed it earlier. So off I went on foot the way we had come in the car.
Another helpful individual, this time a man, hunted among his screws for something that might fit. He explained, as had the young woman earlier, that these screws normally came as a set with the knobs, and there wasn’t much call for them these days. Also they had an old kind of thread. He didn’t find anything suitable, but he did send me on to a real ironmongers called Knights, opposite the library.

And there I struck lucky and bought four imperial screws at 20p each. The old thread must be an imperial measure.
Then I had to find my way back to Waitrose car park. I realised that I was probably now in a direct line to the car park and should not have to retrace my steps back to and along the High Street. I had exchanged greetings with a traffic warden earlier, and suddenly spotted him again. Now, who else but an ambulant traffic warden would know the quickest way there?

He did, and directed me through a car park; along a couple of cuts, or back alleys; and across a cemetery, to Southampton Road where I would be ‘near enough there’. Miraculously, I followed the route and ended up at Waitrose just as Jackie was emerging with a loaded trolley. This was handy because I was beginning to think that a Modus in that forest of cars was like a needle in a haystack.
Jackie rather kicked herself for not remembering the ironmonger’s name.
Becky and Flo arrived early this evening and the four of us dined at Elephant Walk Indian restaurant in Highcliffe. A little more upmarket than others we have enjoyed, the food here was superb, but we had to wait for it. The service was friendly, but one had the feeling the two women on duty were rather overstretched.