The Sophist: it's the Rightmove Roundup again!

Arty houses with paintings on the walls? Let's zoom right in, uninvited and unwelcome.

You know that moment at the end of a big night, where things have mostly run their course; most of the fun has been had and most of the people have gone home. But in one corner of the room there’s still a couple of diehard cokeheads left, a furious glint in their eyes as they put the world to rights with their chemically enhanced megachat. Growing ever more convinced that this plan they have come up with really could solve everything. That their plan even is a plan at all, and not just three bits of Rizla held together by wifi and a hard stare. And so these charmless leftovers fuel through with their delusions, until the sun comes up and it finally dawns on them that the party has left them.

In unrelated news, it’s been an interesting week for our prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, hasn’t it! One interesting week out of the three weeks that they have had in their jobs. In their first one, the queen died and millions of people felt sad. In their second one, the economy died and millions of people felt bad. In the third one, the Conservative party died and millions of voters felt had. Can’t wait to see what these dudes do with their fourth.

And so to houses, which cannot even be bought because there are no new mortgages to be had, for which you can thank our two close personal friends in the previous paragraph. So let’s just zoom onto Rightmove and stare at the art that people have got on their walls instead. Zoom in until I break the touchpad on my Mac. Zoom in until we get put on a register. If they gave out restraining orders on the basis of how many hours a day you spend zooming in on other people’s houses on Rightmove, I would no longer be allowed out in polite society.

I do this, dear reader, for you. I live for others, as my father used to say as he polished off our uneaten food. Something Liz Truss will be round your house to join in with in a minute, I imagine. (Did you hear her, lost for words, when grilled on local radio stations about being prime minister? As Angela Rayner, deputy Labour leader said about it, “Liz Truss has finally broken her long painful silence with a series of short painful silences.” Which did make me laugh quite a lot. Before I resumed my spate of murders.)

1) ST KATHARINE’S PRECINCT, REGENTS PARK, £12M

Grade 2 listed luxury, right beside Regents Park, the heart of London, what the hell is going on, who is that lilac painting on the wall, is it Michael Caine crossed with John Major crossed with Lily Savage, why is there a red and black bedroom that seems to have been decorated by the same interior designer who did Argos, what in God’s name is that poster of Amy Winehouse doing in there, I suppose Camden Market IS in walking distance, is that a psychedelic Magritte influence in the gallery room with the steps and the - and if you - if you think I am even able to begin to speak about the art installation hanging from the kitchen ceiling like an estranged family of pork scratchings - I am unwell.

And there’s only 106 years left on the lease, because this land is part of the Crown Estate, not really yours at all even if you pay for it! As the leaseholder you would also be liable to pay four grand a year to the Crown Estate Paving Commission. Who I looked up, to see what kind of mystical, medieval guild they were. Reader, they do the pavements. Outside the twelve million pound house with a Clip Studio Paint jpeg of Amy Winehouse with her hand between her legs. Well done everyone, let me lie down and die.

2) ARTY BOHO BOBBINS IN PECKHAM, £2.25m

Oh I wanted to hate this house because it makes me so jealous that my bones hurt. But alas, I cannot do it, for look, forsooth, it says ABOMINABLE ABDOMINAL FUR on the mantelpiece. And that is good. I have decided not to burgle them now. Even though the naked man in the painting above the sign does not seem to have much abdominal fur at all, not even an interesting quantity of public hair, which you can check if you zoom in on his private parts. I don’t get out much.

As for the little bust of a man’s head on the right hand side of the sign, well it’s located so close to that biography of HITLER that it is giving me PTSD flashbacks to a text my own mother once sent me. Back when I published a book called The Hungover Games, which is all about my love and my loss, and she went to look for it in a local bookshop in Devon.

We move on. Oh look, this house on Lyndhurst Way in Peckham also has a big slab of text on the kitchen wall, which is all about how epicurism - something I personally believed we called epicureanism - (HOIKS BOSOM IN WIKIPEDIA) is for average people who are not very tall and have bright eyes and fleshy lips, as opposed to those people who have no taste and don’t know how to live, who are long and lanky in everything and responsible for the invention of trousers. (I’m not making this up, that is actually what it says. That Sophie Heawood, they will say when I am gone, she zoomed in so you could live.)

On second thoughts I’m now thinking about burgling them again after all. The trousers thing has irked me.

3) SMALLHOLDING IN WOODCHURCH, KENT, £975k, HOBBS & PARKER

Oh this house in a country village is not just cosy and heavenly and comes with a whole paddock and a minifarm but look, LOOK! At the art on their green kitchen wall! Jeremy Deller has made it to Woodchurch, Kent!

FARAGE IN PRISON.

Incredible scenes.

Please make it happen, guys, but with a family-size cell so we can put the others in there with him. It will save on fuel bills.

4) ARTY BARGAIN ON THE VENICE CANALS, LOS ANGELES, $1.85m

It’s in California, but you don’t even have to convert the dollar price into pounds. They’re the same! THANKS FOR EVERYTHING LIZ AND KWAZI DON’T FORGET TO SLAM THE DOOR WHEN YOU JOIN NIGEL IN THAT PRIS oh anyway, have a squizz at this little place with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and the art on the outside! It’s relatively cheap and cheerful for this part of LA. Of course, Venice Beach and the canals all used to be cheap and cheerful, full of skaters and muscle marys and friendly homeless junkies, all before Goop and Silicon Valley muscled in. The two worlds still collide a little, maybe even in this very house, which is located at 225 Carroll Canal. Something I know because American property listings, unlike British ones, contain the exact address. Which is exciting for people like me, who constantly think about burglary.

5) PARADISE IN PANTELLERIA PRETENDING YOU’RE TILDA, €1.5m

Have you seen that Tilda Swinton film that’s set in Pantelleria, this tiny tiny island off the coast of Sicily? It’s called A Bigger Splash and oh God you’ve got to see it. It’s so sexy and so dark and so delicious and you just look at this Rightmove listing and imagine that scene in the - ok first you imagine her ex boyfriend and the swimming pool, then you remember the other bit with her ex boyfriend in the kitchen - but really I just imagine the bit where they get taken to some kind of makeshift restaurant that clings to the hillside in Pantelleria and is made only of tables and love and the best food you have ever eaten in your life and everyone gets excited to see her there because she is playing a character who is even more famous than Tilda Swinton. But she has lost her voice and can’t speak!

Dakota Johnson was amazing. Ralph Fiennes was amazing. If only everything in life was as beautiful as that makeshift restaurant clinging to the hillside beside the deep blue sea. Although I suppose you could describe the current British government as makeshift, and they do seem to be clinging to a cliff, so perhaps my own doomscrolling will provide all the beauty I could ever need.

(PS: This Substack mailout is currently free to read, but if you upgrade to a paid subscription you will ensure it can go on forever, and what could be more beautiful than that. Goodbye!)