It's the Rightmove round-up, encore une fois

Featuring a Californian desert dreampad for $18m, a £4m newbuild in Hackney that asks more questions than it answers, and an abandoned church in Wales for £25k.

1) Invisible House, Joshua Tree, California, $18m.

If you follow any sexy young Californian influencers or other monetised narcissists (like me) you might have seen the Invisible House, a mad glass box situated in the desert outside Joshua Tree.

It was built in 2019, on its own 67 acres within the national park, and there was a time when everyone was going there and taking hott hott pics of flesh and flora and glass. Then that fountain of selfhood ran dry, and now it’s up for sale, although maybe the film producer owner Chris Hanley ( Spring Breakers, Virgin Suicides, American Psycho), who built the house with architect Tomas Oskinski, is just taking a punt on someone paying him 18 million bucks.

Given that this is the sort of property where you invent a price and see what happens, and given that it was widely announced as being on Airbnb for a bit, and then being up for rent at $150k per month, and - I mean what would you even do there for longer than that?

Every part of your head and neck would have been flung backwards at artful selfie angles, every inch of the 100 foot pool would have been dipped in nekkid. You’d have walked up the house, you’d have walked down the house, you’d have fried an egg on the windows, you’d have gone very hot, you’d have gone very mad. How many Succession style power phonecalls can a person pretend to make? Sure, the desert would have spoken to you, but the desert would have said go home shifty fuckballs and take your mirrored cat-flap with you.

We move straight on, lads, to PISSTAKE OF THE WEEK:

2) Three-bedroom house, Navarino Grove, Hackney, London, £3.75m

£3.75m for a house in Hackney you say? It’s been featured in Vogue, you say? Designed by an architect, you say? Righty-ho then, let’s take a look. Aha - that’s an interesting angle they’ve got going on in their £3.75m garden. And the timber’s going a bit green on that gable end. And even the tablecloth looks depressed.

Oh well let’s move on to the kitchen:

Ah yes, some lovely cupboards there, nice bit of woodlike substance and brass. Shame they had to build the kitchen in a corridor, and not in an actual room where you can see anyone’s face while cooking, or keep an eye on your kids, but then they are only selling this place for *checks notes again* 3.75 million quid. So pass the Perellós m8.

What about the bedrooms? Well here’s one that seems to involve more unnecessary angles than a Sarah Vine column in the Mail about any woman who isn’t Sarah Vine:

Hold up - we’ve found a further bedroom with an even more distinctive shape:

And an en suite to go with! Golden Showers ahoy!

“You using the bath tonight Mum?”

“Oh no you’re alright love, I thought I’d just jump in the en-suite for that feeling of enclosure in a menacing triangle of custard, you know, just craving that sweet spot where claustrophobia meets the use of perspective as exemplified in The Shining. Plus nobody will notice if I piss in it.”

Here’s another picture of that fabulous garden for which I believe these people are charging *takes a third look at the spreadsheet with boggling wild eyes* almost four million English pounds. The prison fencing out towards the railway line looks sturdy, at least.

Still, it’s a real joy to see what they’ve done with the carpark.

I wonder what the Real Housewives of Clapton would make of all this.

3) Five-bedroomed house for rent in Baulking, Oxfordshire, £3500 pcm.

Bestselling author Clover Stroud is renting out her house in Oxfordshire, near the mystical magical White Horse of Uffington, and The Ridgeway. Full disclosure, I have been to this dreamland, where children are allowed to ride ponies into the kitchen.

It fits Clover’s enormous family into it but has been tidied to within an inch of its life in these photos so you might be better off having a nosey around her Insta for the real chaos. And you can also read her books, which are all about the life they live here, the sex she tries to have here, and the death of her sister Nell, who invented Giffords Circus.

Clover says it’s not a particularly beautiful house on the outside, as they did a massive extension to make it look like the ranches she worked on in Texas, but it’s bloody nice within. Plus all the fields and space you could ask for. And the White Horse over the fields for just a little bit of shamanic ritual, at midnight, as a treat. Also her eldest kid has held a few raves in that barn. I should take the piss here, shouldn’t I, to show my neutrality. Er maybe they’ll cut you a deal if you’re Baulking at the price.

4) The Old Customs Watch House on Spice Island, Old Portsmouth, £3.25m

My friends, this massive house costs half a million less than that place beside the railway line in Hackney, and it seems to come with a jetty and dominion over the seas. A water garden! In every window a telescope! What fresh heaven is this?

“The property was originally used by Customs Officers from at least the early 1700's through to the 1970's when it was purchased by the current owner's family. Located at the entrance of Portsmouth Harbour on the famous 'Spice Island,' it has played witness to the Nation's history, watching Nelson, Wellington and Captain Scott of the Antarctic all leave the harbour.”

There are four bedrooms, several floors and about 3,000 square feet to play with. And a roof terrace and the potential for planning permission and - people, I am almost willing to make Portsmouth my home. I am close.

5) Village church in Gwynedd, towards the coast of west Wales, £25k

After all those prices we need a palate cleanser. So here’s an abandoned church for 25 grand, in the hamlet of Llanymawddwy, which is to the north of Dinas Mawddwy, on the minor road which connects Dinas Mawddwy to Llanuwchlyn and Llanwyddyn over Bwlch Y Groes.

Yes I did copy and paste all that.

Saint Tydecho was a sixth century saint in Wales, said to have come from Armorica, which was either a part of Brittany, France, or part of Wales - historians apparently still don’t agree if the sea was involved in his journey or not.

(Have you got David Bowie singing This is not Armorica in your head? You have now.)

Young Tdyecho is said to have arrived at the time of King Arthur, after whose death he became an anchorite, ie a hermit who retreats from society and prays a lot. Like a monk, but not inside a monastery. Which is how he was able to found various churches, including this one.

Oh Tydecho! I feel such a pang just thinking about you and all that has gone. Look what we did to your chapel. The four winds found it and they sang it into their chaos song.

But look at that wet land and that hot light. The smouldering fury of that hill. I don’t think the Gods have forgotten you, Tydecho.

I think they might have left a fair few curses on your graveyard, though.

See you next week! PS: US to give away free lighthouses as GPS makes them unnecessary. Program aims to preserve the properties, most of which are more than a century old, to anyone willing to preserve them