Twelfth night may have passed, the tree been stripped and the turkey leftovers thankfully behind us, but we just had to find room for this most special of season’s greetings that we received, alas, just too late to run in December.
Proud Toby Pendecost shared the impressive efforts of his fellow Candour co-founder, Dan Rees, who went to great lengths to write his Christmas message across the streets of London – 131.55km, to be exact.
Remarkable endurance – and no small measure of planning – went into the creation of this festive map of a truly mammoth bike ride. While the rest of our Christmas cards have been recycled, only this one was cycled in the first place. Diary can only assume Rees is pedalling furiously as we speak, in a bid to add “and a Happy New Year”.
Lockdown, crockdown
By now, Diary is well used to doing its best to see any kind of funny side to the ever-mounting gloom. Thus, we were far more amused than we should have been to tune in to BBC1 for the PM’s Monday night message only to see our Sky box display the words Still Open All Hours on screen, just as Boris was announcing very much the opposite.
Others, it seems, impressively maintain a glass-half-full approach to lockdown three. Amid the many offers of weighty comment on the implications, one e-mail stood out in our inbox on Tuesday morning: “Crockery essentials for a cosy lockdown dining set-up”.
Judging the public mood to perfection, we are told that the founder of online premium outlet retailer Peyton & Tyler is on hand to share expertise on “the crockery and décor essentials that promise to make every dining set-up picturesque during lockdown”.
The e-mail adds: “Sitting around your kitchen table might not have quite the same ambiance as the intimate, authentic Italian bistro you usually enjoy… until now at least! Lockdown is a perfect opportunity to spruce up your dining area, making your meals the cosy, heart-warming, relaxing (and, well, pretty) experiences that they should be.” Suddenly, everything seems just a little less bleak. If you need Diary, we’ll be busy picking out new plates.
Mofid takes the cake
With no end in sight to the booming demand for sheds, savvy investors want little more than a slice of that tasty logistics cake. And may Diary’s clumsy metaphor serve as an introduction to the culinary skills of Savills’ head of industrial research Kevin Mofid, who shared this delicious-looking confection on social media.
Remarkably, it did not win the research team’s annual bake-off – to the understandable astonishment of many who replied to Mofid’s posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. Others vied to identify the facility pictured – with eagle-eyed James Williams, partner at M1 Agency, seemingly first to recognise it as Amazon’s Tilbury warehouse. That level of shed knowledge really is the icing on the cake.
Horse bits
Diary loves a quirky change of use, and with the raft of permitted development rights and changes to use classes introduced last year, we are sure to see plenty that during 2021. Right out of the gate we have this from East Herts Council: an application to convert the delightfully named equestrian store Hertford Horse Bits into two flats.
Once all the planning fences have been cleared, first-time buyers will no doubt be champing at the bit to jump right in and start horsing around in their very own home. But with the flats so close together we can only hope they get on with their neigh-bours.
We’re sure the flats will end up being called something boring like The Stables, but if we had our way they would honour the past: frankly, who wouldn’t want to live at Flats 1 and 2, Horse Bits?
The “toys” that made moolah
Diary has referenced our professional interest in superheroes before, but it isn’t often that a press release about comic books lands in the EG inbox. This, however, was such a week.
The latest research from our friends at OnBuy is focused on “the toys that could earn you millions”. Leaving aside the rather flexible definition of toys, they found that the highest-value comic of all (Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman) sold for £2.4m in 2014. That beats Beanie Babies (top price £450k), Barbie (£226k), toy cars (£131k), board games (£109k) and Disney VHS tapes (a Beauty and the Beast “black diamond” example sold for £11k). However, the best investment of them all is trading cards – a rookie card of Mike Trout (us neither) fetched £2.9m last year.
It is at this point we remember that we are on property duty today… so, if you’re scratching around for a mortgage deposit for a new house, or looking to fund the next addition to your burgeoning portfolio, maybe check the loft for childhood treasures?
