don't know if it's only the British who name their houses. Do the Germans and the French also have a penchant for unprepossessing bungalows called "Dunroamin" or starter homes named after Greek islands? It does seem a peculiarly British thing to do. Noel Coward called his house "Wit's End", which was clever, unlike the inner-city pub I once went to in London called "Harbour Lights". This attractively named hostelry overlooked a large housing estate where the only water view was when it rained and the holes in the car park filled up. It has since been knocked down, possibly by someone in a fit of disappointment.
The American Indians were very good at names. They called themselves things like "people who live by the big rock in the river" and, on the whole, if you visited you would not have been disappointed. There would be some people living by a big rock situated in the advertised river. I was recently in

Yosemite in California. Apparently Yosemite means "some of them are killers", which I think provides all the information needed to decline an invitation to stay the night.

The Welsh have a similarly practical approach to naming. I have a friend who lives in a mill in deepest west Wales. She is known locally as Jane the Mill, and her husband is known as Peter the Golf. In a heartbeat, I feel you know a great deal about their life and relationship. I have been thinking about this because life comes in cycles and I suspect this type of naming may need to make a comeback across the country.

I like the idea of having neighbours you can visit for help with your Latin declensions. But what happens when the teachers and bobbies want to move on?

John Prescott recently announced that many new homes must be built across the south-east of England. He has put forward the laudable notion that affordable property needs to be provided for policemen, nurses, teachers and so on. I think this is splendid. I am in favour of policemen, nurses, teachers and so on, but as a fully paid-up member of the Party for the Politically Naive, I am not clear how this will work. If you build lots of cheap housing in the field behind my house and let lots of lovely essential workers buy them, that would be fine. I like the idea of living beside neighbours who you can visit for late-night help with your Latin declensions or to borrow a syringe to get the jam in your doughnuts. But what happens when the teachers and bobbies want to move on? Will their houses magically stay affordable or will the owners, like anybody else in the South-east, get whatever they can for the places?

It is the mantra of any estate agent that the impetus for property prices lies in "location, location, location". The South-east is a convenient and attractive place to live. When you find a pub in the area called "Tranquil Garden by the Stream" you are not being sold a pup. You will get to sip your beer in a nice place with a bit of a lovely garden and a babbling stream. So you build falsely affordable housing (often cheek by jowl with luxury properties because the developer has to get something out of it) and who does it help but one raft of workers for a short period of time? Am I being very thick, or won't these places become unaffordable to the very people they were built for in a single generation of transactions? OK, I may not have understood it all, but then I'm not great on the rules of Cluedo either.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Sandi Toksvig is a comedian and author