Keith Hann column

Mar 9 2005 By Keith Hann, The Journal

Moving is becoming a theme of Journal columns, when we should be really be striving to make it your verdict on their contents.

My neighbour Willy Poole is looking at properties in France, where he can pursue la chasse beyond the reach of Blairite political correctness.

I, meanwhile, have been looking at houses in Lincolnshire, for the more prosaic reason that I thought it might be quite nice to live with my fiancée after we were married.

Funny place, Lincs.

As a PR man of sorts, I was fascinated by the varying approaches vendors adopted in trying to sell me their properties.

At one end of the scale, there were eager young couples who had spent years transforming listed wrecks into genuine dream homes, and were now looking to cash in and move to the next project.

As a man with a lifelong aversion to DIY, I could not stop myself asking why.

At the opposite extreme, there were the resentful elderly types hoping to downsize to somewhere more suited to Zimmer frames and less to visiting grandchildren.

They had typically put their properties on the market months ago and had long lost interest in showing them off.

Then there were those who had simply upped sticks and gone - usually in a hearse - leaving the disposal to estate agents who couldn't answer the simplest questions.

Several would-be vendors were looking to move overseas. My personal favourite was a man whose longing for Spain was so great he had transformed his hideous 1930s house into a sort of hacienda.

After much shilly-shallying, I had to decide between a lovely Georgian house completely hemmed in by a characterless modern development, and a 1970s detached with open country views, at least until John Prescott's surveyors arrive. I went for the latter.

Then I came home, looked at my view of the Cheviots, and thought "Nah. I can't do it."

Whether the love of your life is a beautiful woman or chasing foxes on a quad bike, Northumberland is a mistress that's going to prove very difficult to give up.

So now there's me and a disillusioned lady wondering whether I'm really ever going to move, or am simply going through the motions.

Keith Hann is a PR consultant and writer who likes a drink. www.keithhann.com