Lowri Griffiths on the strange new dinner ritual that’s replaced polite conversation about the weather

There’s a moment at every North London dinner party now, somewhere between the main course and dessert, when someone asks the question. Not “how’s work” or “seen anything good lately.” The question. What did you pay, and what’s it worth now. I’ve watched grown adults who spent an entire main course discussing genuinely interesting things, books, travel, a mutual friend’s terrible new haircut, pivot instantly the second someone mentions they’re “doing a bit of work on the kitchen.”

The New Small Talk

It used to be the weather. Now it’s whether your neighbour’s extension pushed values up or down on the whole street. I sat through forty minutes last month while two people I genuinely like debated the merits of a loft conversion versus a side return extension with the intensity normally reserved for actual moral philosophy. Nobody asked to weigh in. Nobody escaped either. That’s the thing about the house price conversation, once it starts, you’re in it, refilling your glass, nodding along, quietly doing your own mental arithmetic about what your own flat might be worth if you ever dared to sell it.

I don’t think this is really about houses, if I’m honest. I think it’s about the fact that most of us in this city are one unexpected life event away from a genuinely uncomfortable conversation about whether we can actually afford to stay here. The house price chat is a socially acceptable way of asking “are you also barely holding on financially” without actually asking it directly.

A City Obsessed With Its Own Value

Estate agents’ windows have become a kind of ambient civic wallpaper, the same way a church spire used to anchor a village. You don’t really look at them anymore, except you absolutely do, every single time, doing that quick mental calculation about whether the two bedroom on the corner is worth what they’re asking, and what that means for your own increasingly modest hopes of ever owning anything bigger than a shoebox with a Victorian cornice.

Coverage from The Standard has tracked London’s continuing affordability squeeze extensively this year, and honestly reading it feels a bit like reading your own diary if your diary were written by an economist having a quiet breakdown.

What I Actually Think About This

I think we’ve all quietly agreed that discussing property is more comfortable than discussing the actual anxiety underneath it. Nobody wants to say “I am worried I will never own a home in the city I grew up in.” It’s much easier to say “have you seen what number forty-two went for” and let everyone infer the rest. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe every generation needs its socially acceptable proxy conversation for genuine financial dread. Ours just happens to come with a lot of very specific opinions about kitchen islands.

Next dinner party, I’m bringing a rule: first person to mention square footage does the washing up. We’ll see how long that lasts.

More from Lowri Griffiths at her author page on The London Prat.

Related coverage can be found at MyLondon.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/