Number 57

I wonder if every street of London has a Number 57?

I live on a fairly nice street in South West London: the well-maintained Victorian houses stand proud in their red brick and stone, their owners realising by now the value of their castles in 2005. All seem to take good care of them as a result with manicured front gardens, tasteful driveways and the occasional sympathetic extension. All except one. Number 57.

The facade and garden wall are painted in a thick white with occasional use of yellow and purple near the windows. Those same windows are falling apart and the curtains behind mere rags. The downstairs extension roof is a piece of corrugated steel that wouldn't look out of place on a farm - the pig sty, for example. The worst bit is that there's always, always bags of rubbish half divided between the normal household stuff and junk stuffed into Sainsburys carrier bags.

I can't honestly say that there's no NIMBYism creeping in here, although I daresay I'd have more to complain about if I lived nearby rather than down the road. It's more the waste... the waste of a beautiful house where similar sized properties, replete with water features, are easily fetching over a million.

Isn't this a waste for the owner too? Sitting on all this money and letting it fall down around them either through choice or because they feel they don't have a choice? For goodness sake, if you've got a house of that stature take advantage of the ridiculously high London property values rather than living in squalour.