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I heard of a cottage in Iver Heath – all the modern, British-style, conveniences – to be auctioned. With the best legal opinion from a very capable solicitor, who later came ‘unstuck’ by falling into the lawyer’s booby trap or ‘occupational neurosis’, my bid of £8000 was successful. By curious chance I overheard a conversation in my Dorset Square Hotel between two well-informed and financially knowledgeable gentlemen who were talking in undisguised tones of mingled amusement and amazement about a fool who had just paid £8000 at auction for a mere workman’s cottage. Could folly go further? And what were things coming to when that sort of fool could have £8000 to throw away? This story had an unpleasantly evocative quality. I listened; in fact I would have had to be deaf not to hear. My cottage was not in a particularly desirable neighbourhood either – poor train service and no buses worth talking about. Could that fool possibly be me? It could; it was.