Rules for selling your home

Paint everything beige. Walls, furniture, pictures, pets.
Get rid of anything you like which could be considered vaguely kitsch, quirky, or cool. If your mother would hate it, pack it away.
Clean everything. Then clean it again, just to be sure.
Make your home look like no one lives there.

I am hating this, and we’ve barely started. Think I am the only person in my block who over the past two years has managed to lose money on their property. OK, so my kitchen is possibly as old as I am, and the bathroom could do with freshening*, but if the maxim ‘location, location, location’ is true, then I should be living in a goldmine. I can see Big Ben from my front door, and hear it chiming when I’m lying in bed. I am within walking distance of two underground and two mainline stations (Kennington, Lambeth North, Vauxhall and Waterloo), and a ten-minute stroll from the Thames. Plus, I like my flat, and I think it looks cute, but estate agents seem to think otherwise.

I definitely need to develop a really thick skin when it comes to this property lark.

What’s schadenfreude in English?

I read the reviews for this book with some glee, as they were mostly stinkers. The blog was (is? Haven’t looked at it in a year) OK, but I never thought there was enough in there to make a decent book. And seeing as the company I work for turned down a blogger’s book I proposed two years ago, which was subsequently bought by HarperCollins (yes, I am still harping on about that; no I’ll never let it lie), I am keen to see what sort of reception the bandwagon-jumpers receive. Bitter, moi?

*ripping out and replacing