Quilts at the Imperial War Museum North

First, thanks for the pantograph votes. We too picked Pashmini, so we are reassured... although Brenda as a fellow lawyer I loved the way you were able to argue both sides just as I was doing in my head!

Today I took a day away from quilts ( sorta.. OK, not very much, as you will see) to visit the Imperial War Museum North with Dennis. Now a warning - this is a long post with lots of photos but if you are interested in design and lines I think it will be worth your time. The main reason for going was my current interest in this man

The great Daniel Libeskind, architect extraordinaire in my book. His buildings are not just cases for exhibits but are themselves symbolic, quirky, imaginative and plain clever. Oh and great inspiration for the Quilts UK special category this year which is architecture! I will spare you most of the 117 photos I took but you have to see these ... and bear with me ... there is quilting and patchwork for real at the end of the show.

This building is created from three great shards - Air (the vertical one) Water, which overlooks the Ship Canal and houses the cafe and Earth, the main exhibition space . These are the three arenas of war. The design came from an idea he had when he was blocked and frustrated and threw a teapot from the window of his studio (as you do!) Running downstairs he found three main shards. He turned this into a factured globe,

reconstuted after war - different, but healing into something new.

You can however take design too far. Mr Libeskind wanted the entrance to be hidden like a bunker, with no signs so that vistors had to expereince the disorentation of displacement to get in. The museum pointed out that as a charity with a public purpose it was rather important that patrons could find the door. So there are signs - to his disappointment apparently!

The building is full of quirky lines. It is meant to slightly disorientate as war does. The floor of the main space slopes and few if any angles are straight. The air shard has a walk way 29 meters up this shaft. You can see the black flooring way up high in this shot.

the solid flooring leads to this window whch appears straight.

but from outside is not.

then when you walk back to the life the floor is such that suddenly you can see through it way way down to the ground. Quite dizzying even though I am not afraid of heights.

The outside of the air shaft is verticle concrete slats with gaps. However, when I photgraphed it the light created these concentric lines on the picture that were not visible to my eye at all. Quilting lines wouldn't you say?!

This one I took becuase it reminded me of the stripey quilts made by Brenda and Anne which I had seen on their blogs yesterday Even the cubicles in the ladies have been offset so that the lines as you enter are curved and displaced.

The museum is the otherside of the Manchester Ship Canal from the Salford Quays which houses this Lowry Arts and Theatre centre - designed to look like a ship coming out of the water. The two are connected by this bridge.

And coming back over it you get great reflections in the office complex. Isn't this vaguely Hundertwasserian?

Anyway, this building does house a museum concentrating on how war affects the lives of people. In amongst the exhibits I found this crazy patch apron made during World War one in Sumatra

and this quilt ( hung way way up on a wall sadly) made by the Asian Ladies group in Preston with an artist, Lynn Setterington, in 1997 -8. It commemorates 50 years of independance in Pakistan and India . The quilt shows the countries before partition with the word "azadi" meaning Freedom in Urdu embroidered in the centre.

We had a great day spending far longer than planned. (Thanks in part to a very piggy lunch at an incredibly cheap (£6.99) four course chinese buffet on the Quays! They did chocolate cornflake cakes on the desert table. And banana fritters with sweet, sweet syrup. And fruit salad. And cookies. And I had all of them. Oink. But I didn't have any of the cake so that's all right!)

But sadly, all good days out must eventually come to a close...

If any of these photos on this post inspire you to design, feel free to copy them onto your computer for your personal quilting use only.

Which pantograph?

Today I booked the Kaffe Fasset quilt ( still debating that title - how about Diamonds through the ether with Jennifer?... can you tell I live not far from Liverpool and Beatle land?) into be longarmed ... Dennis is paying, fantastic chap that he is! Even for the binding to be done. He says he wants to stay married and somehow he thinks the chances are greater if I don't have to work on that quilt anymore! Perhaps no co-incidence then that the quilter is called Chris Marriage.

Anyway I got to spend some time looking at patterns - I had no idea there were so many to choose from and it made me think a lot about my own free motion options for other work.

If you go to the Intelliquilter site you can link to a number of sites offering endless patterns. Of course in reality many of them would look just fine on the quilt but we narrowed it to this and this. We have chosen but it would be interesting to see which one you would go for ( you might even change our minds!)

Help needed!

I am looking for web tutorials / good books on the following topics - any recommendations please? I want books that are worth buying for the fact they contain a number of techniques not just a gallery of quilts:

(a) Button making
(b) hanging tabs and loops for wall hangings
(c) decorative edges for quilts
(d) fastenings - zips, buttonholes, button loops etc.

Brenda has recently posted a great list of tutorials for quilt facings so I am sorted for that!

Thank you

Immersed in quilts!

I have taken this week off work to imerse myself in quilts. So lots of photos for you this post. On Sunday Dennis and I went to Quiltfest in Llangollen. A small but well formed quilt show was enhanced by the presence of Magie Relph who was happy to relieve me of a large sum of cash in exchange for the most beautiful Ghanaian fabrics.

This was one of my favourite entries - part of a challenge exhibition to use the Sisters block. It is - I think, if my memory is correct, by Jennifer Roberts. I have a deal with Dennis at shows. He comes and looks at the quilts 'as if they were art'. (I know I know- his words. I know they are art!) He lets me know which ones strike him and which do not before sloping off to get a coffee and read his book whilst I go round again more slowly then hit the traders.. I find this useful not only to gauge what quilts he might like around our house but also to see which might work as art and which not so much. I do not always agree with him but of course we are entitled to our own opinions...

.... only sometimes that opinion is best kept internal. He saw this quilt, which was inspired by a Scotttish shore line and immediately and loudly pronounced it "horrible". Only its maker,Elizabeth Brimelow was standing right behind him! Ooops. Fortunately she either didn't hear or was exceedingly gracious as she came up and asked me if I'd like to know more about her exhibition of work which of course I did. It included this double sided quit which I first saw in this book. I had been trying to figure out its construction for ages so it was good to see it up front ( and back, as it were).

I was amused that this quilter who has been exhibited in museums and has her quilts in publish books confessed that she had never made a 'proper quilt'! (She meant a traditional pieced quilt.) She was of the view that others could do it better than she so why bother trying. I agree to a point - I think you mayb ehave to try once to know that others are better but then yes, focus on what comes naturally to you rather than trying to follow the crowd

My own efforts have been more humble.

The beast of a Kaffe Fasset top is finished (yeah!)

From this quilt I learned that:

1. For all I moaned about it, I spent hours at a time happily working on it's construction - the committment and self-discipline I apply to my work seems not to desert me at the sewing machine!

2. In the end it took three part days to finish - nowhere near the mamoth off-putting, tedious job I had been building it up to be! It could have been done ages ago.

3. Whilst I would probably enjoy the contruction of any quilt I am much more at home working freely than following a pattern ( especially a one patch one!) . I like to pull out from the stash a pile of fabrics that look good together, take them downstairs and start to make something, designing/playing as I go.

In celebration of its completion, despite the fact that I told myself I was not starting any more quilts until I had finished up the major projects on hand I started these blocks ( using the preferred method in 3 above).... nominally they are my samples of fabric manipulation for my City and Guilds ( and therefore I did not cheat) but I think you can see that they are intended to end up as a quilt when the course is over.

(that one doesn't show well but is slashed fabric)And this one still needs its hole filling!

At day's end

Before

I finished my 'fun' (work?) for the day at ten past seven on a high - finally I had sewn not one but two rows of patches without unpicking anything! Really this is not a difficult quilt at all but I seem to be making heavy weather of it. I am happy I have finally broken its spirit ( go supernanny!) but disappointed I didn't get more done. It takes 20 mins to do the longest rows. I have 15 rows left but they get smaller and one would hope faster. However, sewing the rows together take time - I am estimating 5 - 7 hours more which mean 1 hr a day this week.

After ( same same but bigger!)

It is probably a sign of progress that I am now starting to think about names for this quilt. No doubt you can assist with ideas.

How about In praise of slow.

or I'd rather be in Massachusetts tidying Jennifers closet.

Or, have a friend who has a quilt ( made at a tricky time in her life) called I can't wait to leave the bastard. So I considered I can't wait to finish the bastard off but perhaps that's not suitable for the family quilt show market. ( Not that this is going to any show being a kit quilt!)

3 3/4 hrs in

Do you get the TV programme Supernanny where you are? I am sure if not, there is an equivalent. You know the scene where the nanny is trying to show the parent how to get the naughtiest child in the world to bed and they just have to keep dragging them back no matter how many times it takes? Eventually the child gets the message and starts to behave?

Well I feel it is a bit like that with me and this quilt, only I am not sure who is the nanny and who is the child but sometime soon one of us is going to win the battle! I have now done row 13. Jubilant because it was the first one where I didn't get a seam wrong I took it over to the design board to meet the others.... perfectly sewn... but with a patch missing. Grrrrr!!

Now let me say that I really love comments on my blog but I have to put Qult Pixie right on her last comment. This quilt cannot be used for applique background. It is 108 by 93.5 inches finished and if you think I am going to be covereing up even a quarter of that with more work you need your head feeling! The good thing about the quilt though is that the gift includes the costs of getting a longarm quilter to quilt and bind it so the piecing really will be the end for me. Or the end of me maybe... :)

Two and a bit hours in

I hate this quilt!

I have to do 31 rows. I have done 10 and every single one has required unpicking. Sometimes I have had to unpick the resewns stuff. Grrr. One problem is keeping track of what goes where even though I have just spread all the pieces over the table in order and numbered with a scrap of paper. It is a Kaffe Fasset quilt and the fabrics are cut so that they blend which is great overall but when you are trying to get a horizontal pattern to be constructed in diagonal rows with blending fabrics - OY!!

Dennis wondered through when I was re-unpicking. This is a kit he bought me at great expense to him so I want to do it well but asked,
"Which do you want: perfect or finished?"
"Its meant to be fun for you."
"it would be if these f.....ing points would ever match."
He peers. No doubt he remembers that this was the kit from the shop that only sent half of it and we had to complain about their service.
"Well, then," he says in his best encouraging voice, "it must be cut badly."
Deep breath, "I CUT IT!"
He slunk out and is now watching rugby well out of shouting range.

Oh well, back to work. I'm having a break at 3.30 though.

One hour in

Well already there is progress with the task of unpicking and repiecing that I have been avoiding for months. First hour saw:
25 min sprawled on floor unpicking
5 mins runing around house shouting 'Can't find my glasses'
2 episodes of Annie Sm'ths podcast
1 cup earl grey tea
15 mins cleaning machine and swapping needles etc ( it was filthy)
15 mins piecing.

Project Day Is Here - Post 1

In just a few minutes I get to have my first email chat with Jennifer and then we set to doing out 'Don't- want - to- but- know - I -should' tasks for the day. Of course I get the benefit of starting at noon my time and so planned to fortify myself for the task with a traditional English breakfast. I might love fancy restaurant but sometimes you just can't beat a well cooked English Breakfast

This greasy spoon is right near my sisters house. I just love the name. I didn't love the fact that it was, without explanation closed when we got here. Bummer. Next best optionis about sven miles the other direction at the chain Little Chef. But, they do have an American style option so in deference to Jennifer I ordered that. ( This Dennis posing!)

And of course having eaten this we need no more than light snacks for the rest of the day so I am off cooking duties and onto quilting - yipee!

I feel like curling up with a book right now but no, I am off to unpick my mispieced quilt and put it back together. Progress reports later.

Which do you want first....

The good news is that I may not be hoplessly addicted. I went to a quilt shop after work today and bought..... nothing. Nada! See, it is possible. I went hoping to buy an entire roll of wadding and 7m of backing/binding fabric for the frothy quilt but they had no wadding on the roll at all and nothing caught my eye for the backing. I didn't even grab a reel of thread when I was there. Nothing. I amaze myself.

The bad news is that just before I left work a fellow Judge was chatting to me about his holiday home and wanted to show me some photos on his laptop. So there I am politely looking at his shots of pool, beach and his rather stunnng wife holding up a plate of ginormous king prawns when I spot the tiles on the Portugese table top. The photo is on its side so I am there head on one side, finger on the screen going, "Oh fantastic pattern, look a bit of hand applique and you could piece the stars and....." and then I remember where I am and who I am talking to.....!!

Show girl / WinPs

I have just launched a 'Jealousy Quilt Show' over on my Quiltland blog - please come and play along with me!!

Meanhile over here in the real world I have been gearing up for my project day with Jennifer by actually working on some WinPs as well as photgraphing them! So I am pleased to say that my prevoiusly drafted posts are now out of date. So I give you the 'before' (with extracts of original text) and the new after photos. I hope this encourages you to get out your WinPs on 9th Feb with us ( or any other day) - it is amazing what you can finish in a short time that has been lurking for months!

'How many fish in the deep blue sea?':

Before

"This rail fence is not this muddy colour at all - rather a bright turquoise. Made because my City and Guilds 'teacher' said she wanted us to bring somthing strip pieced for the next week then never mentioned it again. That woman does annoy me these days! It just needs quilting and binding." (And the creases taking out!!)

After

The quilting thread on the front blends and so is hard to photo but hopefully here you can see the fishies to match the feature fabric on the front.

'Blues and twos'

Before

This 'nee-naw'quilt was started in Bath in October 2007 because Dennis saw the fabric on a trip to Midsomer Quilting and said that the little boy inside him was excited by it. I pieced it and fused the letters whilst on holiday but didn't have my machine. (Got talked into that one - never again!) so it remains unfinished. It needs applique stitches, quilting and binding.

After

Bound with this backing backingbrought forward and quilted with wavy lines and large stippling

'Electric Avenue'.

Before

Another remnant from my convergence class. made with fabrics from Brixton market's african shops. Meant to be clever clever but it won't lie flat. I am told by Yvonne ( at Morceau) that all my twisted seams might have a lot to do with that! She told me to unpick amd resew the twisted bits or at least to clip them, but it has been in the box since. She also kindly pointed out that piecing polycottons on the bias so much won't help either. Jeez. You try to be creative and it turn out there are all these rules.....!You will notice that my inabilty to do maths has affected the triangles too. I wanted to do a convergence quilt that didn't look like all over convergence quilts! Its the usual squarish panel cut into triangles.

After

It is not perfectly flat but this photo is of it firmly pinned to the carpet and I reckon it is near enough that with firm pin basting ( reluctantly I think I might need more than spray on this one) and persuasive quilting, this might well now work enough to complete it. You can't see it here but the black fabric has great texture on it so I might well follow that for the quilting. The geese are thre dimensional.

Photo tutorial - Recralitant borders

Remember this quilt whose borders wouldn't fit? Well I considered all your suggestions then came up with one of my own! Here is the illustrated tutorial on how I got them to fit:

The problem

The quilt is made up of half square triangles. The border is constructed from larger triangles, the base of one of which should be equal to two of the squares. My problem was that the base of some of the large triangles were too big meaning that the border strip was overall too long.

The solution

1. Plug in a lap top by your sewing area and play a DVD of The Sopranos through it. This step is optional but I thought it would lend credibilty to my muttering to the fabric that if it didn't do what I said this time, I would wrap it around a corpse and get Tony and Pussy to bury it in a gravel pit in New Jersey somewhere.

2 With right sides together pin the upward facing triangle points to the corresponding seamlines of the squares. This resulted in the bases of the downwards facing triangles being 'puffy' and not lying flat.

3 I took the point of the downward facing triangles and aliged it with the seam line of the squares to which it should correspond. I pinned it.

4 then, I pinched the fabric so that there was a ridge in line with the seam line. Either side of the ridge the fabric then lay flat. I pinned along the bottom on this ridge.

5 Then I sewed in line with the pins creating a permanent ridge. Most of mine were in fact a quarter inch seam but one or two were less. Sew the actual width of the ridge.

6. The effect is that some of my pink triangles now have a seam down them as if they were pieced and the borders now fit.

7. The borders make all the difference to the quilt and I am so glad I persevered . And it was so quick - less time than the Ireland - v - Italy match which was on at the time. This is the top hung over my bookcases - I really do need a place where I can put larger tops to photograph well!

8 However, there was one slight problem. I had accidentally used a piece of the border fabic ( which does occur throughout the center) at the very edge near the borders which led to this effect. Ooops! So having finally got the borders on I had to unpick a little and swap the half square triangle and resew... and still the match was on.

Much better!I can't take it further yet because I don't have any suitable fabric for backing but I am sure that can be recitfied sometime!!

Money rant update

Now isn't this little news piece from this morning, which my newshound husband just told me about, interesting in the light of my rant last night?

Last post today I promise

Ok, three posts in one evening might look like am I sad person with no life ( particularly as it is Friday) but I just had to post to say that one of the nicest things ever just happened.


I posted my rant post ( see below) with a little tredipation and was just delighted to get two comments almost instantaneously while I was still online. Nice ones too! I Lur-ve this internet thing. How amazing that someone in Kansas City is reading me! But that's not really it!


The Kansas City lady is Jacqui who was a new name to me so I wondered if she was one of the people I had just got an email to move to the members list in my Quiltland ring. Checked ringsurf and there she was. Welcome! I have no idea how she found me ( I hope she is about to comment and tell me!) and am amazed that so many people are coming to play with me on a blog I don't even update as often as this one and which has not a sensible sentence on it.

But thats not it either.


Also in the wait list for membership was Garnered Stitches. That blog I recognised as she has been kind enough to comment and email me before. So I added her to the list then went for a flick on her blog and I find an entry Called Wednesday WinP's ( apt given my sequence of recent nonrant posts) which has a section showing a quilt under a title reading,

2) Inspired by Helen Conway's "No Fear Quilt" blog date Sept 24th 2006

What? That's Meeeee!

She adds "This is going to become a raffle quilt for the church bazaar in November - best to start early! Helen's quilt,which I saw in an article she wrote in a quilting magazine, inspired me as I had the fabric and no idea what to do with it"

It is her interpretation of a pattern I made up for one my earliest quilts then used as an illustration for an article on shape. And someone read both the blog and the article and emulated it!!!!

Well that is just the most touching, exciting, honoring thing I have had happen to me for a long long time. Thank you so much, Alison!!

Project Day Countdown 4

Thank you for your comments on my frothy quilt. Interestingly none of you said what I thought was the only sensible solution which was to unpick the borders (which are too long not too short) trim the triangles and resew. Which I would do if I was confident that I wouldn't overtrim and make them too small!

Today's WinP:

This is a very recent work in progress, a quilt based on an exhibition at the British Library in sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Mum has done all the embroidery, ( and much of the design so far despite protesting all the waythat she couldn't!) working very very hard to do a fantastic job and guess what - I goofed. Big time. Just what I was dreading doing afetr her enthusiastic work

The mistake in the sashing - the red line should continue- is easily fixable. But how did I miscalculate the size of the corner triangles so badly? !

This quilt tells me I should stick to what I do best - making up African quilts with random strips as I go.No pattern, no measurements. This I think needs some hours of concentration to add fabric to the triangles and to get cornerposts into the sashing right. Project Day on 9thFeb would give me that but on the otherhand, whilst this is a work in progress it is a very new one and has not ever actually been left, so does it really qualify for the special day's project? Plus it has several more borders to go which have not been fully designed yet so there is no chance I would actually finish it.

Finally - our chocolate quits are up on the Twelve by 12 blog if you haven' seen them yet.

Money rant

I have tried to focus this blog on quilting - mostly because I realised early on that quilters liked to read me (Thanks guys!) and, because I like readers, I have focused on what you seem to like. But tonight I am going to have a little digress because (a) Natalie set me off because I agreed with her so much and she mentioned one of my pet topics (b) I may be underestimating you - maybe you will be interested in some other stuff than just quilts and (c) its my blog so I can :)
(but I won't again if you leave comments telling me to shut up!)


Natalie wrote:" I am enjoying some small amount of satisfaction in saying "I knew it, and I told them so," regarding the economy and the housing market..." then she gives links to excellent and funny journalism about the spending habits and housing market decline in the States. Well worth checking them out.



Well let me say, hallelujah, girl, I knew it and I told them too.



First let me vent about credit. Today I met a 35 year old woman who has £80,000 of unsecured debt and a mortgage of £27,000. She earns around £13,000. So who's fault is that? Some people say it is the lending institutions for handing it out. Indeed she said to me' They were throwing credit cards at me'. Indeed, it angers me that a crashing economy that might affect me and my finanically responsible life might be at least in part caused by irresponsible institutions.



But, that woman was intelligent. She was capable. She was not duped or over influenced (as I accept some people might have been). She chose to take that credit. I am not such an out of touch fat cat lawyer that I do not appreciate that on £13,000 pa its hard to make ends meet. I accepted that some clothes might go on credit, that some food at the end of the month might go on there. Emergency repairs for the car. But did she need a dishwasher? The three holidays to Greece? The European trips for the family following a football team around the European fixtures? The brand new car? And when she reached her credit limit was that the time to rein things in for a while? Apparently not, it was the time to get another card and use that card to pay off the first one....



I read a snipet in the financial section of The Times recently - a quote from Saga, the specialist provider for over 50's ( Or actually it could have been Help The Aged - but someone like that !) Their complaint was that pensioners were suffering poverty because a high percentage of them had not had a holiday for 4 years.



Whoah!! Lets think about that. We are not talking here about people who have suffered mental health problems or abuse as a child and end up sleeping in doorways. We are not talking about the immigrants we have who have fled persecution with the clothes they stood up in to arrive here and be labelled as 'bogus scroungers'. These are people who live in houses ( not refugee camps in Darfur) . They have clean water piped into their house ( unlike Babita one of my sponsor children in Nepal), they have free medical treatment ( unlike the millions of children with AIDS in Africa). They can go to free libraries. They are guaranteed enough money from the state for food and clothing and heating (with extra when the weather gets very cold). Not much like the victims of the Pakistani earthquake or the Asian Tusnami then. But, poor things, they did not get to go to Spain and ride pedallos in the sea.

Of course, I can talk - I had several holidays. I can see that there is inequality but inequality is not the same as poverty and what exactly it is and why we have it is a whole other blog rant. (But let me hint - in some circumstances it has a lot to do with people saving rather than paying card interest. In others it has a lot to do with how we see eating out as a basic, which we can afford to do because we are content to see waitresses being paid minimum wage. Although not if they come from Poland to take that job even though we don't want it because we couldn't afford to go on holiday if we were paid that wage.).

Our government refers to people being in poverty if they are in the lowest percentages of income. That again is about equality - on that logic if the average wage in the country was £1 million but 10% of people only earned £900,000, they would be 'poor'. Is this just a matter of semantics? I really dont't think so. I believe that words matter. I believe that we as a society have talked ourselves into a mind set where basics and necessities have expanded to include what are actually consumables and luxuries. And if it's a basic then it's OK to borrow to have it isn't it? How we define things does matter. I wonder whether if we stopped calling them 'credit cards' and started advertising 'debt cards' they would be so popular?

And then there is the housing market. Britain is obsessed with housing prices. The nation appears to have bought into several myths:


(1) Property is a sure thing.
I heard a celebrity interviewed about why she prefered property portfolio to pensions. 'It always goes up'.
The interviewer pointed out the huge property crash we had in the ninties. 'Apart from then, it has always gone up.' she retorted. (As I said, inequality is another rant so I am not going to address the tricky moral question of whether it is right to make millions from a commodity which is a genuine 'basic' but which one is helping to make unaffordable for a whole generation of working people.)

(2) A home is an investment
Yes, if you own a home you will need less in retirement because you won't need to pay rent.
Yes if you downsize you will release cash to spend. But I utterly depair of the clients who live in modest homes who tell me they bought for £17,000 and its now worth £200,000 and therfore they dont need a pension. A great investment. Yeah, great except for the question of where they are going to live when they sell it because every other modest home is worth the same too now.

(3) Buy to let is the way to millions
I have a barrister friend who invested in flats in Liverpool for her and her husband's retirement. Every single one in her portfolio is now in negative equity and she is running £100 per month short on each flat between rent recieved and mortgage going out. Why? Because Liverpool was designated city of culture, ouside buyers, many from London, piled in smelling property price rises. The market was pushed way beyond its natural balance and now the investors have gone and the locals can't afford to buy at the inflated prices.

(4) We won't have a crash in the property market. It might slow down but it won't fall
Apart from the last three months you mean? Look, here is how the property market works. The people who live in a house want to sell it. Lets say it is a small house. A starter first time buyer house. If it increases in price everytime it sells the buyers will have to earn more each time to buy it. But house prices have been growing faster than wages. So now we are at the stage where people can only just buy. They are borrowing for the deposit. They are borrowing high mulitples of income. They can do it, but only just. And not in all areas of the country. So, if they want to sell and make a profit they need wages to increase again. But they are not. Public sector wages increases are less than inflation at present.

So, maybe everyone will just stay in their house and it won't decrease in value. It will just be stagnant. Fine. Except some people will have to move. Some will die and it will be an estate sale. And some -those with £80,000 of unsecured credit say, will fall into arreas on the mortgage and the house will be re-posessed. Or, a couple get divorced and the court orders a sale. So the house will go on the market. And the buyer will say, we'd like to buy it but we can't afford your price. Not least because we are already paying for credit cards and student loans ( because yes, the governemnt actually forces students into debt while they get the education that gives them the skills to participate in the economy). And since in fact - depsite all the indexes and surveys and despite all the money divorce lawyers like me spend on vaulations - a house is only worth what someone will pay for it, the price will fall.

And then when it has fallen so that houses are affordable, what will happen? Well, they will probably boom again because people can then afford to subscribe to the myths and never ever learn from past lessons. Which to be fair is because we don't educate them enough. I have had to teach young trainee solictors how mortgages and pensions work. These are graduates. And then people get confused about products and which schemes are and are not tax advantagous. Which might be because the government changes the goal posts so frequently that even accountants say they can't give certain advice.

This survey from the Prudential includes some frightening statistics such as:

* 15% of 18-24 year olds believe that an ISA is an iPod accessory (For international readers an Individual Savings Account can contain either cash or stocks and shares and gives tax free interest. It should be the savings account of first choice)

* one-in-ten was unable to identify a mortgage as a form of debt (10.5%), while 15% of over 65s thought an inheritance was a debt.

* 45% do not know what a repayment mortgage is - a quarter (23%) believe it is made up of interest only payments.

It makes your head really really hurt. It makes you tired. Weary to the bone. Maybe that's why a recuperative package to Portugal is now a basic need.

PS I told you - blame Natalie. She set me off.
PPS I feel better now.