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I have had a lot of dealings with estate agents this week and last. It is all very stressful; it appears tenants these days are very picky and are insisting on double garages and lawns, never mind my beautiful handmade limestone tiles. I called Xtina and asked her view: she is always buying houses, doing them up and selling them on. She said most people had no taste and it was the same with their beautiful period house in Leigh; people did not appreciate handmade Belgian floorboards but were fixated on cupboard space. It was a question of waiting for the right one. But how long could that take? What percentage of people have taste? Anyway, the agents are mostly female and very charming, they have said things like "you have a lovely home."

Mind you, they can hardly do otherwise; they can't come in and say, "Well, this is a crock of shit, isn't it, Madam?" It would be like that Julie Walters sketch of the Mellow Birds ad where a woman subtly buys her neighbour a tin of Mellow Birds to hint that her coffee is like shit. In the Julie Walters sketch, Woman 1 drags Woman 2 to her sitting room, where she has grafitti'd huge signs all over the walls saying: YOUR COFFEE STINKS".

As we went round the house and I pointed out the advantages I realised it was really very nice and pointed out to one of the agents that it was a bit of a shame to leave the house when I had just finished doing it all up. The agent laughed and said this always happened: people did all they could, then they moved on. Maybe they even do all the work because they know they will want to move on?

Mind you, Vanessa, who used to own this house, didnt move because she had done it all up; on the contrary, it was in a right state, and she moved because she had run out of potential husbands in Shoreham and thought she would have better luck in Tonbridge. She had had 3 husbands before that, I believe, and was still quite strong-minded and optimistic, though quite mean with her money, hence why the house was in such a pickle.

After that, a couple came to see the house and I noticed they did not talk to each other at all: he followed me round the rooms and made a few comments and she followed him and said nothing and I interpreted the relationship as being dysfunctional and thought probably he was a bully, and she was not allowed to choose her own wallpaper.

The agent later said she liked the house but he was not sure. I knew they wouldn't come back. In any case, more people are coming tomorrow, so we are eternally hopeful that the right ones will come along; it is rather like looking for a man; it appears more logical, as you can consider factors like proximity to station, storage space, etc, but the fact is, people either fall in love with it, or look at it and think, hmm, not really my type, and that is that. This is why Xtina is stuck with Eddie, her unreliable French partner, despite his practical drawbacks; he is not at all near the station and does not have any underfloor heating, but she loves him.