Conservatory or orangerie - it's a matter of fashion

28 June 2010

A senior banker with one of central London’s niche lenders asked me last week whether I thought the market was going to suffer a double dip.
I am frequently asked such questions and have an array of rehearsed responses I can wheel out at random.

But this time I had to be honest with myself because I’ve never been entirely sure what double dip means, and when I turned the question around my banking friend didn’t know either.

At school we used to have an annual bus trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach which features an enormous big dipper.

I remember this was once billed as having a double dip and as my banking friend was a Lancastrian he remembered it too. It was the closest image either of us could come up with.

The industry we work in is rife with sound bites and clichés - and by the way, if anyone can tell me what quantitative easing means I’d be eternally grateful.

I’m as guilty as anyone and, in common with many estate agents, have for years trotted out the mantra ’the property is situated in an established residential area’.

To me, the word progressive conjures up Rick Wakeman in a cape but it’s not what the Lib Dems have in mind

I have now stopped saying this because the word established conveys precisely nothing to lenders.

The posh Wentworth Estate in Surrey is established but so is the roughest council estate in Tottenham.

I’ve never said ’unestablished’ because I don’t think such a word exists, and in any case an area that is not established as residential can only be rural. Or should that be established rural?

And aren’t you sick of the word progressive? During the post-election bun fight between Tory leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat boss Nick Clegg I kept hearing it.

We were repeatedly informed we were going to have a progressive coalition government with a progressive agenda informed by progressive ideas.

To me, the word progressive conjures up Rick Wakeman in a cape behind a bank of keyboards (pictured), although I now understand this is not what the Lib Dems had in mind.

Word usage is often regional and I have my roots in the Potteries.

My Uncle Stan still lives there, not in a bijou mews cottage like the beautiful people have in Chelsea but in a terraced house.

If I were to call him now and ask him if the sun was shining brightly on his patio he’d say I had gone soft in the head.

Uncle Stan doesn’t have a patio, he has a back yard where he keeps his racing pigeons.

Even the word conservatory is fast being consigned to the verbal dump. I suppose this is because common people now have them.

Posh London and Surrey estate agents don’t say conservatory anymore. No, houses now have orangeries. Cor blimey, whatever next?

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