Diary - 10 February 2007

Since my two children have dispersed to Hollywood and gap-year Sydney, I spend a great deal of time at home with the individual who needs me most: my house — mean, moody, magnificent, prone to upsets if left. Its tanks conveniently overflowed when we went away to Los Angeles at Christmas. That’ll show me. Today yet another painter came to inspect the damage and I thought I heard the pipes gurgle a little, as if with laughter. This house used to be the Chinese military attaché’s, and we still receive letters trying to persuade us to buy used fighter planes. Once we had an invitation to a party on a Thames river cruise to discuss buying submarines, but I didn’t think I’d get away with turning up and getting out my cheque book. In the attic we discovered a menacing picture of Mao, and the neighbours relate stories of the lawn being mowed by a row of Chinese in suits, one pushing the mower, the others walking beside him in a regi-mented row in the spirit of old communism. We also had various soundproofed rooms. God knows what they were for.

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I see the Blairs have been increasing their property portfolio. The first house my husband and I ever sold was to Tony Blair and Cherie Blair, in Highbury near the new stadium; Number 10 Stavordale Road, in 1986. That house played its tricks too. We’d never had any problems with our boiler or roof, but they did. Indeed, when we saw them some years later, during their first visit to 10 Downing Street when Bill Clinton was visiting and John Major was prime minister, Cherie’s first words to us were ‘F***ing Stavordale Road’. Sweet.