I was full-on Attila the Mum

BACK in 1979, which feels almost too many years to get my head around, Pete and I embarked on one of those key rites of passage. We went on a “quest” to find our first-ever flat.

- LYNNE BARRETT-LEE

Which really wasn’t that difficult. This was London. And predated the internet by a decade. And, as such, was a process largely dictated by access to a newspaper and a telephone. Having been circled in the first, and inquired about via the second, flats were usually procured after a Tube or a bus ride, using the principle of “Turn up. Get flat” And, yes, I do get that this favoured the fleet-footed, but with no Experian, or Google, or money-laundering regulations, it was as workable a system as any. Get there first, stump up the cash, and you were sorted.

In 2025, the rental market is very different. A yawning gulf now exists; both between incomes and rental costs and, worse, given the first, between demand and supply. To get a flat, you need not just to gird loins and don trainers, but have enough paperwork in place to set up a government inquiry, an immaculate credit history, ready cash, and a VERY loose definition of the word “okay” (Particularly when suffixed by “for the price”)

“Um, that looks okay,” Georgie said, on the Tuesday, when, from the unlikely environs of a playbarn in the Cotswolds, she was scrolling through multiple estate agents’ “to rent” listings, being unexpectedly, urgently, in need of a flat.

“Get a viewing!” I advised, shovelling Pom Bears into a grandson. “Get two viewings, three - get as many as you can!”

‘And so to Wednesday, when we alighted a train at Paddington, bleary-eyed after our 5am reveille. Having got to Stockwell, however, in came a call. Yes, of COURSE they were sorry, but the first viewing was cancelled. The landlord already had “enough quality applicants”

“But you KNEW,’ Georgie raged, “we were travelling all the way from Cardiff!”

To which the response, more or less, was “C’est la vie”.