Flicking through the television channels recently and landing on show after show featuring house and garden renovations – Escape to the Chateau; A Place in the Sun; Homes Under the Hammer; Grand Designs; Garden Rescue; Home of the Year; The Great House Revival; Cheap Irish Homes – I found myself thinking of Prospect Cottage, the last home of the film-maker and artist, Derek Jarman.
While entertaining in a Disneyesque sort of way, this fairytale creation of a highly desirable home and garden is no more than a distant dream for all those young adults still living with their parents, no more than a galvanising dream for all those older people still scrimping to save for a mortgage deposit while renting expensive accommodation, and no less than an impossible dream for those who are living in hotel or hostel bedrooms, in direct provision.
To say something counter to this – that not everyone may want to own a house or apartment, that many might prefer to rent – is to risk being dismissed as insensitive, even subversive, especially in the current housing crisis in Ireland, where one of the highest rates of population growth in Europe collides with one of the more sluggish construction programmes.
Jarman knew he was dying and made his beautiful home and garden not as an investment either in money or in the future. Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
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Source: IrishTimes - 🏆 3. / 98 Read more »
Source: IrishTimes - 🏆 3. / 98 Read more »