A Tour of Tea with Blends For Friends

 

Knowing me well, as she does, my darling mother bought me a voucher for a tea-tasting experience for my birthday last year. Knowing my powers of organisation as she does, she was not remotely surprised when it took me over seven months to cash it in. But good things come to those who wait, and in due course, I strolled eagerly up to the Langham Hotel on Regent Street to spend the afternoon with Blends For Friends’ expert tea taster and master blender, Alex Probyn.

In recent decades tea’s supremacy in England came into question, seeing it frequently dismissed as sophisticated coffee’s country cousin. But with the rising ‘vintage’ trend, the humble cuppa is once again becoming ‘cool’ – evidence of this even as I made my way up Regent Street was the new T2 flagship store, all achingly hip neon and black signage and artfully displayed crockery. Tea shops, tea rooms and tea parties are popular with the young as well as the old.

Now, me and tea: it’s a lifelong love thing, not to say an obsession. In this I am classically British. In these isles, laying on a round of the cup that cheers but not inebriates is the most surefire method of gathering a family together, bonding with your colleagues, or demonstrating the sort of workaday, wordless devotion that underlies the most authentic love matches. Say “Cup of tea?” in almost any scenario, and the response will always be “ooooh, lovely!” It’s very typical of our buttoned-up, ‘careful now’ country that our greatest shared national indulgence should be such a modest one. As Bill Bryson, my favourite anglophile American, noted bemusedly, “I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.”

My memories of tea go back to my childhood, when my grandmother would make pots of the stuff on a more or less continuous basis all day every day, winter or summer, and saw no reason why she shouldn’t introduce her little granddaughters to the wonders of caffeine nice and early. Whenever someone makes me an extra-milky cup, or accidentally gives me sugar, I have Proustian memories of the mug with yellow flowers which was ‘mine’, and how she would call the bubbles on the surface made by the flow of tea from the pot (always from a pot) ‘kisses’. Nowadays, I like my tea strong enough to climb out of the pot by itself, and scoff at the idea of sugar. I might even entertain a green tea or a (whisper it) herbal infusion. But while my palate may have matured and diversified, my love for the brown stuff remains childlike if only in its insatiable greed. So I knew that I was in for a treat.

Having navigated the Langham’s intimidatingly luxe reception, I found myself seated at a table with a handful of strangers, waiting for the show to begin. Probyn was already presiding over a table laden with gleaming pots and sample shots of tea. This wasn’t like other ‘gift activities’ I’ve attended in the past, where the emphasis was on having fun. Quite apart from the intimidating levels of glamour at the Langham, the atmosphere was unapologetically aimed at aficionados – Probyn’s apparent idea of an icebreaker to put people at their ease was to ask the room if anyone had a favourite tea plantation (and alarmingly, one of our number did). I pulled out a notepad and tried to look serious, all the while wondering when we would be getting a cup of tea.

Alex began with a potted (hah) history of his life in tea. Ironically, he didn’t even drink tea before being employed by Tetley as a graduate trainee tea-taster 17 years ago (and by the way, who even knew there was such a job? And why didn’t you tell me???)

Having applied as a joke and getting the job almost on the strength of his inexperience, he fell in love with the tea industry, eventually shifting from tasting to sales and marketing with a view to gaining the skills and experience he would need to set up his own business, Blends For Friends – a bespoke tea-blending service creating individual blends from over 750 ingredients. This was the end-game of today’s tea-tasting experience – we would try a wide range of teas, learn about how different ingredients worked together, and then finally design our own blends of tea which Alex would then go back to the lab and create for us.

He then moved on to the history of tea, taking us on a guided tour of 5000 years of camellia sinensis, from its mythical origins in China, when a leaf dropped by chance into the Emperor’s cup of hot water. The ancient Chinese tea trees were much taller than the bushes on plantations today, having not been cultivated, and initially monkeys were trained to pick the delicate ‘tips’ (as in PG, simply the top two leaves and the bud of the tea plant) from the tops of the trees – you can still buy ‘monkey-picked’ tea to this day, for grotesque amounts of cash. He described the expansion of the tea tradition into Japan and the Far East, and its slow, circuitous route to Europe, finally reaching its spiritual home in London in the 1660s via the Dutch East India company – as in so many things, including gin, the Dutch were way ahead of us, and had been guzzling tea since the sixteenth century.

As a foreign imported product, tea was heavily taxed, but as its popularity grew, this became unsustainable – tea smuggling was rife, and the smugglers would often adulterate the blend with whatever came more easily to hand, principally sheeps’ droppings. Pitt the Younger conceded defeat and lowered the tea tax in 1785. In later years, the British Empire sought a more economical source for its citizens’ immoderate lust for the brown stuff by furtively exporting grafts of tea plants from China with a view to transplanting them to its colonies in India; only to find the Indian farmers much amused at being solemnly charged with cultivating a plant that had been growing ignored all over the subcontinent for as long as anybody could remember. Imperialism fail.

Since then, tea has been perennial in Britain, particularly after the advent of the convenient teabag in the 1950s (97% of all tea consumed is now sold in teabags). Tea endured a brief dark age during the 1990s and 2000s, as consumer culture fell in love with coffee; but now, sales are reviving. Tea is even beginning to acquire the same cult status as wine and whiskey in some circles, with as much attention being paid to provenance, preparation, and other mystifying factors such as ‘nose’ and ‘mouth-feel’. And hence the availability of tasting sessions such as this one.

Alex went on to explain tea’s surprisingly enduring methods of production – due to the delicacy of the harvesting process, 96% of tea is still picked by hand. Due to its sensitivity, it is still grown primarily in China, India, and parts of Africa – warm, wet parts of the world, between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Although some tea estates have been attempted in the UK, the challenges of raising a crop here mean that you pay a premium for a cup of tea Alex dismissed as not much worth the drinking. He explained how so many different types of tea – black tea, green tea, white tea, blue tea, and even yellow tea – are all created from the same leaf, by variations in the wilting, drying and cutting processes. He also took the opportunity to dispel the myth that green tea is ‘better for you’ than regular black tea – the only difference between the two is the degree to which they have been oxidised, and in the scientific research done to date, green tea has not been demonstrated to be significantly better for your health.

He then went into detail about the bizarre system by which types of tea will be graded, resulting in such tongue-twisting descriptions as a ‘SFTGFOP’ (that’s ‘Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe’ to you and me – I know, means nothing to me either). As a librarian, such whimsically random classification boggled my mind a little. Moreover by this point, as you can imagine, I was gasping for a nice hot cuppa – and fortunately, this was when the lecture ended and tasting began.

Alex suggested we take notes as we went along, to help us decide later what style of tea our bespoke blends should be. While our palates were fresh, we began with the more delicate types of tea – white tea, green tea, and blue tea (also known as Oolong tea). These had some strange flavours that I would never have associated with tea: the poetically-named Bai Hao Silver Needle (so called because of its long, pale grey leaf) tasted of almost nothing, but with a whisper of grapefruit, and almost… hay? The Yunnan Green was brewed to perfection, avoiding the bitter taste that results from scorching the leaf with boiling water straight from the kettle – but nonetheless had a lingering suggestion of smoked haddock. And the Taiwanese Oolong, apparently a very expensive tea, tasted like nothing so much to me as chalk.

We then moved on to the different varieties of black tea, with varieties from the three big producing nations China, India and Kenya. My very favourite was the lapsang souchong, which smokily evoked bonfires and autumn nights. After all these subtle flavours, the Earl Grey tasted loud and artificial, the bergamot bossily overpowering my tongue.

We then had a short comfort break (something of a necessity after drinking such a large volume of tea). Then on with the tasting, moving into what cannot properly be called teas but rather infusions – Rooibos, rosebuds, hibiscus and red berries. The rooibos was sweet and honeylike, the rosebuds like Turkish Delight, and the scarlet hibiscus tongue-twistingly sour – the red berries neither tasted, looked or smelled like anything much. Ironically, Alex told us, the major ingredient in most ‘red berry’ teas is in fact hibiscus, which gives the tea its vibrant red colour and adds flavour, its sourness toned down by artificial berry flavourings.

The final tasting was a trip around the world, trying some types of tea we were unlikely to encounter in the supermarket. A beautiful Chinese flowering tea blossomed up from the bottom of the glass like some weird undersea creature, tasting of nothing much but looking marvellous. Stone-ground Japanese Matcha green tea looked like pond water and tasted powerfully of fish, but was oddly moreish. A caffeine-rich Argentinian iced tea left me cold, but I loved the sugary, flavourful hits of Moroccan mint tea and an Indian Massala Chai rich with ginger and cinnamon. And finally, a special treat: a shot of Chinese Pu Erh tea, the most expensive tea on earth – a fermented, aged black tea, matured in cakes for years, sold for mind-boggling sums at auctions to tea connoisseurs. Alex told us that cakes of the best Pu Erh could sell for close to a million pounds, meaning a single pot could set you back about £4000. However, like so many things people are willing to pay silly money for, it must be an acquired taste – the only note I wrote for it was “urgh!”

The tasting session had overrun, and we were left with very little time to design our blends. I opted for a marriage of tradition and whimsy, choosing a black tea base of lapsang souchong, lifted up with the sweetness of rose petals and the sour snap of hibiscus – I called it Sweet & Sour Tangy Tea. Alex suggested balancing the sharp hibiscus with some citrusy lemongrass, and I was more than happy to take his advice. It arrived about a week later in a vacuum-sealed container, and was utterly delicious and scarlet once brewed. So all in all, it suits me to a ‘T’ (sorry).

Love letters to libraries

So, for a nice change, libraries have got some press attention and some rather glamorous cheerleaders at the moment. Neil Gaiman has spoken out in their favour, describing being left alone in a library as an inquisitive 8-year-old as akin to being given “the keys to the kingdom.” Caitlin Moran, Malorie Blackman and Carol Ann Duffy have raised their voices in support of endangered Liverpool libraries; and the Guardian have seized the zeitgeist by asking their readers to submit their ‘love letters’ to the libraries that have loomed large in their lives.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot of these love letters are from we librarians – unsurprising because let’s face it, none of us are in this job to get rich. Underneath our sensible cardigans, librarians are by and large a passionate breed – passionate about people, passionate about public services, and passionate about information. And we tend to be passionate about the places we work as well. Be it in concrete campus block or art-deco edifice, city centre or stately home, when people think of libraries – even now in the digital age where so much of the resources we offer are virtual – it’s primarily as physical spaces, places to escape to, to study in, to take refuge from life’s distractions.

So here’s my love letter to libraries – the physical spaces rather than the abstract idea. I can’t claim to have been faithful, but I have loved many sincerely. And I hope to love again.

I’ve been lucky enough to work and study in some amazing library spaces. The University of East Anglia, where I did my first degree, was designed by brutalist architect Denis Lasdun. Dismissed by the ignorant as ‘ugly grey boxes’, the campus buildings, including the Library, have a stark, uncompromising beauty to them, particularly when juxtaposed with the surrounding greenery and glittering artificial ‘broad’.

I spent many a happy hour gazing out of the windows of the little carrels on the second floor at drizzling rain or drifting snow, flurried leaves or sparkling sunlight. From the right window, you could catch the view of Norfolk Terrace, one of the two distinctive ziggurat-shaped halls of residence that appear on all the university’s publicity materials. While the Library itself might not have been much to look at, it provided the perfect vantage point to see the best of what there was to see – a sort of concrete metaphor for the function of libraries (and librarians) in general.

My next library of note was the first one I worked in – the University of Oxford’s Vere Harmsworth, serving the students and staff of the Rothermere American Institute. It was a lovely building, laid out in interleaved layers in a way that made the big, glass-and-steel space feel curiously cosy and intimate. However, at this point I was living in Oxford, so was a bit of a library slut – I may have earned my crust at VHL, and done quite a bit of studying there (sometimes at the same time – good old late shifts on the enquiries desk!), but I also cheated on it with the Radcliffe Camera, Worcester College, and of course that ultimate doomed library love affair, the Bodleian. Like a bad but charming boyfriend, it left me breathless and elated and utterly out of my depth, but I just couldn’t help but come back for more.

Upon moving to London and looking for a library traineeship, I struck gold with the Foreign Office Legal Library. The Legal Department had managed to secure a plum set of offices off the corner of the famous Durbar Court, and in one of these was the small yet perfectly formed Legal Library. Walking into the King Charles Street building each morning, clipping across the courtyard and up the grand staircase, strolling through the marble colonnades to a high-ceilinged, gilded room full of books, spending the day helping people to answer questions that would literally change world affairs – sometimes I had to pinch myself to believe that this was actually my job (although the pretty much perpetual infestation of incredibly impertinent mice did help to keep my head out of the clouds).

There was another library space at the FCO, the grand Ansel Library, a great wood-paneled room, all wrought-iron staircases and galleries. Unfortunately, after the controversial closure of the FCO’s library in 2007, the dispatch of its physical holdings to King’s College London, and the ‘rationalisation’ of its staff into an e-library service, its only permanent inhabitant was a large stuffed anaconda called Albert, which had been presented to Queen Victoria by a Guyanese bishop some hundred years before and hung up in the FCO for want of anything better to do with him. Although Albert himself could not be blamed, it was perhaps ironic that the FCO signed off a £10,000 taxidermy bill to have the ragged reptile re-stuffed at around the same time civil service jobs were cut in half to meet the call for cuts.

Having emptied the purpose-built library space of books and librarians, the administrators of the FCO’s estate seemed to be at a loss for what to do with it. The occasional forlorn cluster of hot-deskers huddled in from time to time with laptops, wrapped in scarves against the perennial cold, but on the few occasions I contrived to go in there (mainly to fulfil my lust for oak paneling) the room was almost completely empty, the silence that of absence rather than of feverishly scribbling pens and busily revolving thoughts. Although the Library was beautiful, it was the beauty of ancient Egyptian death mask – all lacquer, no love. Some time after my traineeship ended, the main Library was finally repurposed to house a book-heavy directorate (including a few librarians!). To the best of my knowledge, Albert the serpent still presides, a silent ‘ssssssshhh’ always poised on his tongue.

More recently, I have been working in the library of the London School for Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Yes, I am aware that I have been spoilt. The Library Reading Room is the finest room in a building positively dripping with art-deco style, occupying almost the whole South-West side of the insanely beautiful Keppel Street building. Everything about the room is striking: the high, wide windows facing onto Malet Street Gardens; the painstakingly maintained shellacked cork floor with its original geometric pattern (echoed by the decoration of the gallery railings, which includes some alarmingly swastika-like twists and turns); the serried rows of individual wooden tables; the pampered pot plants scattered between oxblood armchairs; the bust of Richard Doll benignly regarding the room from its perch on the old card index cabinet.

There are more study spaces – the Wellcome Gallery above where group work and quiet conversations are permitted; the Barnard Room (named after the School’s first Librarian, Cyril Barnard) where users can plug in their computers – the Reading Room being listed, it isn’t possible to just install plug sockets any old where. But when LSHTM alumni think back to ‘The Library’, this is the image that will come to mind, as good as unchanged since the School opened in 1929.

I will sadly be moving on from LSHTM in the new year, to the Library of the University of West London. At first I will be based at the Brentford campus; but in the summer, UWL will be opening a new library for the future campus at Ealing, and I will move there bag and baggage. A brand new library space, designed with the needs of the modern reader in mind rather than struggling to keep up with them, will be an unfamiliar environment. I have already been poring over the architect’s imaginings of how the space will appear when complete, and daydreaming about sunshine streaming through plate glass. I feel the beginnings of excitement, as at the outset of a burgeoning relationship, when nothing is yet known, and anything is possible…

My visit to the Ginstitute

This Wednesday, I finally cashed in a voucher I had been bought for my birthday all the way back in November.  The voucher was so beautiful that it constituted a present in itself for a stationary fiend like me, a rectangle of creamy card embossed with copper calligraphy:

But what it entitled me to was even better – the chance to make my very own gin, under the expert supervision of gin-master Jake Burger at the Ginstitute, home of Portobello Road London Dry Gin!

I am an enormous fan of gin.  Although I’m generally speaking a beer drinker, a good G&T is my go-to drink whenever I’m trying to shift my beer belly, or if by evil chance I find myself in the sort of establishment that considers Stella Artois to be the last word in brewed beverages.  As with everything I like, I enjoy the opportunity to find out more about it. I also liked the do-it-yourself aspect of the gift.  I have made my own fruit wine before, and assisted in the creation of several batches of real ale of varying degrees of drinkability.  But with the best will in the world, I think I’d have a hard time setting up my own distillery in the kitchen cupboard.  The Ginstitute offered the opportunity to muck about making spirits without any commitment.

I got to Notting Hill Gate early, so had a pleasant amble down the Portobello Road, enjoying being there on a mild weekday afternoon when it was actually possible to stroll instead of swim through the packed throngs.  The Portobello Star (which houses the Ginstitute) is a small but perfectly formed bar room, all dark wood and green-and-gold wallpaper, and as I waited there I leafed through their menu, featuring bar snacks created in partnership with the sublime Ginger Pig butchers, and a dizzying array of imaginatively-named cocktails.

My fellow Ginstituters were also waiting – a couple from York who had been given the vouchers as a gift by their son, and another couple who had more or less wandered in off the street, intrigued by the advertisement outside the pub.  Presently, we were ushered upstairs into ‘the smallest museum in London’, and into the presence of Jake, who was in the process of constructing a round of perfect Tom Collins cocktails.  Whilst we dispatched these with indecent haste, he brought us up to speed on the dim, dirty and sometimes downright depressing history of gin in England.

Gin first appears in the early 16^th century (or possibly some time before, depending on who you’re listening to and how you classify something as ‘gin’) when the Dutch are recorded as guzzling down genever.  When English soldiers fought alongside them against the Spanish in 1585, they enthusiastically acquired the habit, imbibing freely before going into battle (possibly the origin of the expression ‘Dutch courage’).  It didn’t take long for them to bring the tipple back with them to Blighty, and gin, being very strong and extremely cheap, quickly became so wildly popular with the ‘lower orders’ that it threatened the very social and economic fabric of the country.  William Hogarth’s famous etchings, Beer Street and Gin Lane, demonstrated what he and many others saw to be the deleterious effects of the gin craze on the working classes, who had formerly thrived on a diet of weak ale.

Although manifestly suffering from a brutal cold, Jake still brought the history of gin on both sides of the Atlantic to vivid life, with his enthusiasm and his store of fascinating facts.  It helped that the museum was so atmospheric, full of gin-erobilia – glass cabinets filled with dusty bottles of long-defunct brands, the business card of one of the greatest American cocktail mixers, and a number of ornate, hand-etched mirrors in the lavish style of the 18^th century’s ‘gin palaces’, which still informs the ambience of many a traditional English pub today.

 Leaving behind the bad old days of gut-rot adulterated with turps and sulphuric acid, Jake brought us bang up to date with the invention of the column still, the regulation of the distillation industry, the rise (and occasional fall) of the big hitters of mass-produced gin, and the current renaissance of artisanal gin makers proliferating in London today.  It quickly becomes clear from all the fond name-dropping that the gin world is a small and cordial one – the Portobello Road team are as friendly with the managers of Beefeater and Bombay Sapphire as they are with small-scale operators who might be seen as their direct competitors, such as the team of toffs behind the Sipsmiths range.

The history lesson was over too soon, and it was back to the business in hand.  Armed with notepad, pencil and a bracing G&T (with the Portobello Star’s distinctive twist of grapefruit rather than lemon or lime) we trooped up to the still room – a magnificent mad-scientist-meets-art-deco laboratory full of test-tubes and great glass demijohns of alcohol – to get hands-on creating our own gin.

Jake set out the parameters of our project.  London dry gin is legally a grain-based spirit of at least 37.5% ABV in which the flavour of juniper predominates (and does not, contrary to what you might expect, have to be made in London).  Beyond these basic stipulations, the world was our oyster – although he did also point out that in order to produce something drinkable, it was important to maintain a balance between the juniper base, the zesty, fruity top notes, more ephemeral flavours and the lingering spice tones.  He pointed out that with so many botanicals to choose from this did not significantly limit a gin-blender’s scope – he had recently had someone come in determined to achieve a curry gin, and was able to send them away with a bottle of something that satisfied this peculiar desire and could still be said to answer to the name of gin.

To give us an idea of the possibilities, Jake passed around a number of raw aromatics, including juniper berries, coriander seed, and orris and licorice roots, encouraging us to crush, smell and taste.  The juniper yielded the Christmassy aroma and sweaty undertone familiar to anyone who’s ever stuck their beak into a G&T.  Jake told us that it grows wild on the mountainsides of Tuscany, and is hand-harvested, the berries beaten from the prickly bushes into buckets using a special stick known as a spank-berry.

When I was able to control my mirth at this (I think perhaps that third cocktail was not such a great idea) he continued to introduce us to the somewhat daunting array of distillations at our disposal, ranging from familiar kitchen staples like cinnamon and orange peel to the rather more exotic (wormwood), the unexpected (English hops??) and the (to me) downright essential (Yorkshire Tea?  Yes please).  We were given some time to scribble down the flavours that had most appealed to us, advised by Jake if we had gone too far off-piste, and finally – the science bit! – were allowed to start mixing up our gins.

I had decided to create a plain and hearty English gin, evoking the cosy, comfortable pleasures I subscribe to.  So in addition to Jake’s recommended minimum mixture of juniper, coriander, angelica and orris root, I added English hops, a healthy slug of Yorkshire tea, an extra helping of the biscuit-y orris, some cassia (described by Jake as tasting ‘like cinnamon but more so’) and a little lemon verbena and some grapefruit for a lift.  I wish I could pretend this was the result of a judicious decision-making process, but frankly I was just overexcited, and had to be politely restrained from adding elderberry, dandelion and burdock, and licorice root as well.

The result was deemed a success by Jake, my Ginstitute colleagues, and most importantly by me, and was lovingly christened “Spankberry Tea & Biscuits”.  Offered the choice of having the label applied dead flush or drunkenly askew, I’m sure you can guess what I opted for.  If you fancy putting your tastebuds in my hands, you can nip along to the Ginstitute’s website and order a bottle of my gin – just enter number C191403.   However, I can just as confidently recommend the Portobello Road’s own Number 171.  I was also provided with a bottle of this as part of the day’s haul, and can therefore testify to its deliciousness in cocktails, mixed with tonic or slurped surreptitiously from the bottle on a station platform.

We finished off the afternoon with a round of martinis back in the museum, then stumbled off into the sunlit streets, a bottle of gin under each arm and dipsomaniac smiles on our faces.  An absolutely corking present for anyone you know who’s fond of gin!

When ‘could be worse’ isn’t good enough – a response to Laura Kay’s ‘4 Great Things About Renting’

Laura Kay, who describes herself in her Guardian profile as a ‘free-lance writer and part-time sandwich maker’, has written a comment piece for the Graun exhorting ‘Generation Rent’ (the growing numbers of people in their twenties and thirties who can expect to be renting privately for the foreseeable future) to buck up – renting is actually a great lark, and we should be sanguine about skyrocketing house prices and static salaries.

I find this article extraordinarily irritating.  Which is a bit unfair, as it’s only her opinion.  It probably doesn’t help that I’ve been saving about a third of my income for a mortgage deposit for the last year and a half, and keep thinking about how many pairs of boots I could have by now if I hadn’t been!  But mainly it’s the senseless optimism and lack of logic that nabs my nannygoat.

Quite apart from apparently having the political consciousness of a dishcloth, Pollyanna here seems to have forgotten a few very important caveats to her ‘4 great things’:

1) Not living in fear of breakages:  I actually live more in fear of breakages as a renter than I would if I owned the place.  If the boiler breaks in my flat, I have to

(a) get in touch with my landlords, who are a bugger to get hold of as frequently out of the country;
(b) get their permission to get the problem solved, deal with their angst about how much it’s going to cost, potentially have to put up with them trying to get it done on the cheap by some dodgy geezer with no qualifications before they eventually admit defeat and let me get a professional in;
(c) go through the whole process again if the first intervention doesn’t work, although this time with the angst amplified, and with passive aggressive noises being made about how much expense/hassle is involved in renting the flat to us and ‘maybe we should just sell it’, leading me to be incredibly anxious and inexplicably guilty every time several things need sorting in quick succession.

If I actually owned the flat, and thus the boiler therein, I could simply get the damn thing fixed or, if I couldn’t afford it, live with it.  I wouldn’t spend my life in a state of anxious powerlessness.

2) Freedom to move:  Only if you have a massive deposit sitting handy, or someone rich to sub you.  Most landlords won’t give you back your deposit until weeks after you vacate the property; paradoxically, new landlord won’t let you move in until they have the deposit.  So unless you have a few grand going spare, upping sticks is not exactly the carefree process the author implies.

3) Housemates: I’ve had some bad ones.  I’ve had some great ones.  But ultimately, I’m nearly 30; I’ve been in a relationship for over 5 years; I know who I want to live with.  My parents had bought a house and had two children (and, fair dos, a divorce) by my age, whereas I am still living like a student.  It’s not such a ‘great experience’ any more.

4) Not a symptom of a ‘lost generation’: Ah, this is the one that really had the cerebral fluid boiling out my ears.

“We may be a generation struggling to find jobs and affordable housing, but we’re also a generation who can talk about it, laugh about it and get on with it. There are worse things to be known for than not owning four walls: at least we’re not Generation Plague.”

I detect a strong aroma of the Four Yorkshiremen here – “oh, but we were happy in those days, though we were poor!” “BECAUSE we were poor!” – along with a sewage-y underwhiff of Tory pull-your-socks-up-never-had-it-so-good-ism that makes the gorge rise in my throat.  It could be worse, so stop complaining?  I’ll accept that as a socioeconomic argument when you can spit into my open coffin, thank you very much.

Yes, there is nothing intrinsically awful about renting; indeed, in many other countries it is the norm and people are perfectly happy to do it.  But those countries have social housing, rent control, tenancy rights, and a living wage, as well as a reasonable expectation that when you’re old, state provision isn’t going to be so paltry you will have to make a choice between eating and heating.  In Britain, unless you get very lucky with your landlord, to be a renter is to be a second class citizen, with very little of the ‘freedom’ Kay extols – not even the freedom to paint the walls or keep a cat – and no security at all.