Best bids hell

THE PRESENT SITUATION

At the giant age of 70, I am trying to buy a flat after being out of the property market for eight years - a period which has seen enormous hikes in house prices, to the point where I don't know if I can afford to stay in the London area. I have been viewing flats and houses and putting in offers for the last three years and have found the experience unbelievably frustrating.

For a start, I live three miles from a station and an hour on the Tube from Kings Cross, so each trip to view one of the pitifully few properties in my price range that are coming onto the market is a day out of my freelance writing time. Yes, I am picky, too. I think that at my age, I deserve to be. I want a quiet, roomy home, with outside space, near a tube and close to my friends. But do you think I can find it? Even when I find something that almost matches all my tick boxes and whack in a full asking price offer, already planning where my writing desk will go, I inevitably get a call from the agent next day informing me that they've had several offers at the asking price and it's going to the iniquitous 'best bids' and I have to get my ultimate offer in by 5 pm.

As they have already had my 'best bid' - the asking price - I never succeed in winning the property. Buying a house or a flat anywhere in Greater London has become a competition that only those with deeper pockets than the next person can possibly win. Someone on a pension and a small freelance income doesn't stand a chance.

What about shared ownership, where you buy a percentage of the property and pay rent on the rest? Various friends have suggested that and when I started looking into it, I thought it might be the answer, but I was wrong. The small print on the last set of details I looked at told me that in order to buy a flat in that particular development, I needed an annual income of £60,000. WHAAAAT? I've never earned £60k pa in my life! I thought shared ownership deals were for people on low incomes. What's it all about?

'How about a nice retirement flat?' suggested another helpful soul. Well, I'm afraid my life just cannot fit into the cramped confines of the average retirement flat. Where would I put my piano and my three guitars? My 36 boxes of boxes that are currently filling up a garden shed? My desk, filing cabinets and heaps of box files and manuscripts? My cat? And where would I grow my plants and herbs?

I need my own space. I need quiet neighbours. Barking dogs, thumping music and noisy children should be in the next district, or even the next county, but not the next-door house. That's the trouble with being a writer. You live half the time in your own head space, creating worlds and situations and populating them with characters and dreaming up alternative existences. I really need a sound-proofed ivory tower or a house on top of a hill, where I can sit and dream undisturbed to my heart's content. But the countryside is out as I don't drive and ivory towers are not only non-PC, but have too many stairs for my ageing knees!

I am currently sharing a boyfriend's house. He's grumpy, the house is freezing and the station is too far away. I am working in my bedroom and all my books, paintings and papers are in the afore-mentioned shed.

But before I started charting the ups and downs of my recent attempts at buying my own place, let's take a trip into the past, back to my first ever property, purchased in 1979....