Comment: Grateful for outside space... and outspoken estate agents

Imagine working in a profession so despised that you’re constantly pegged as an untrustworthy so-and-so worthy of acute suspicion.

No, I’m not talking about journalism!

If there’s one job that garners equal amounts of derision and mistrust it’s that of an estate agent. So what does it feel like to be on the receiving end of such hate – and is it ever justified?

We found out in this week’s new column, The Secret Estate Agent.

In a candid account that will hopefully put paid to a few preconceptions about the profession, our mysterious local agent responds to questions such as ‘Do you cringe when you’re asked what you do for a living?’ and ‘I want to put my house on the market - am I mad?’

If you’ve got a question - however controversial - do please get in touch.

In other news, following more than a month in lockdown, Rightmove has reported a spike in searches from renters requiring a garden.

This must come as a surprise to absolutely no one (didn’t stop us writing a story about it, mind). As someone with a little house but a blessedly big back garden, I definitely get it.

We’re now in week six of this still-surreal new life, and without our outside space I’d have lost the plot.

The glorious weather (remember that?) has made it the ideal place to park the kids, forcing them to come up with new ways of entertaining themselves that don’t involve a screen.

They’ve stuffed each other in bins, sprayed us all with the hosepipe and wrecked their knees on the slip and slide.

Away from the challenges of the home school there have been moments we’ll genuinely cherish. For brief spells I felt like I had someone else’s children - still feral, but totally joyful.

Now the weather’s turned they’ll be grappling for the iPad more than ever, as we try to find our own physical and mental space indoors.

But the sunny garden was definitely a fun sanity-saver while it lasted.