Hot property | 14 June 2008

In Competition No. 2548 you were invited to submit sales particulars for a property well known in literature in your best estate-agent-ese. It was a capacious entry, which benefited from unrivalled clichés and florid, tautological prose. You aped the estate agent’s way of accentuating the positive well. We all know that ‘bijou’ translates as ‘broom cupboard’ and that ‘convenient for motorway access’ would be more accurately rendered as ‘suitable for the hard of hearing’. I was tempted to put in an offer on St Simeon Stylites’ pillar, described thus by Elizabeth Emerk: ‘Pillars for Pillocks is pleased to offer this unique detached dwelling near old Antioch — effectively a sublimely minimalist penthouse 60 ft high consisting of a wonderful 12 sq ft balustraded platform offering clear and unobstructed views of the ground’. But she didn’t quite make the £25-winning line-up. A special mention to Alanna Blake, whose estate-agent-speak I found even more convincing than fellow competitor Lesley Gammie’s, who is one.