“Let’s get this mother out of here…”

  • 9 years ago
  • 1

The unrecorded and therefore unofficial (although often repeated by the men who were actually there), last words of the last man to walk on the moon, Jack Schmitt, the lunar module pilot of Apollo 17 who with his commander, Gene Cernan were the last people to trot along the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. The last recorded word spoken from the Moon was the rather utilitarian and infinitely (geddit?) less sexy, “Ignition!” Why this meander amongst the sepia toned memories of those halcyon days when the idea of living on another planet was thought of as a genuine possibility? Forget a turn-key starter home the right side of Griffithstown, the Moon was where the movers and shakers and those with a permanent table in The Priory (the restaurant, not the rehab clinic), were going to be living. The death this week of Leonard Nimoy brought a tranche of ‘Remember when’ moments from those of us who were around at the very beginning trying to master the Vulcan salute. Nostalgic reminiscing aside, it was an era when anything was thought to be possible and the future held endless opportunities. Fast forward over four decades and ‘live long and prosper’ is, even to the most ardent optimist, an unlikely possibility. But is it reason for wretchedness and despair? Of course not, it’s called life; deal with it. In the era of 24 hour encouragement to be miserable, a day, nay an hour does not pass without some report or ‘expert’ adding to the list of woes. This week the Nationwide released a report showing that there has been a sharp fall in home ownership for the 25-34 year old generation. The report highlighted how, in 2004, in those bucolic days when house prices never ever went down and the 25-34 generation had never known anything but a property to increase in value, the buying market for the under 35’s was 59%. In 2015, this has dropped to 36%. Ruth Sutherland of the Daily Mail shrieks that this is a “dramatic shift and one that indicates a major social change has taken place over just ten years”. Daily Mail, Wednesday 4 March 2015 Well yes, there is a difference, but the world does change. It was as late as 1976 that there were still houses in Wattsville that had neither hot water or central heating. By 1980, this had all changed and I heard nobody bemoaning the “major social change”.
The housing market and estate agency, like any industry has to deal with the circumstances that they find themselves in today. Some will be beneficial, others less so. The Nationwide report and Miss Sutherland’s article, whilst interesting reading are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. As the pointy-eared one himself said “Random chance can operate in our favour”.

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