Many people like beaches. Some would like to live on them or be reminded of beaches where they live. Not making your house out of sand, is however, one of the few bits of sound architectural advice that the bible contains. But many of us have the next best thing. We live in pebbledashed houses.
Pebbledash is basically render with small stones (pea shingle or stone chippings) added to give a gritty vertical shingle beach effect to external walls. Does this amount to blasphemy or is it simply sad and naff? Having lived for some time in a house with pebbledashed walls, should I go to confession? Can I be redeemed? Will I ever feel the warm sands of freedom between my carefree toes? Will I forever after feel the sea breeze passing through my carefree locks and forget the petty jealousies us suburbanites are supposed to harbour towards our stone-clad fellow men?
Or am I ever condemned to be one of the "little people" - those who, according to Steve Morgan, quoted in the New Statesman in 2001, "while not poor, live on modest incomes in modest pebble-dash houses, hold modest ambitions for themselves and their children, run modest cars and hold modest views to the effect that the country is being overrun by foreigners scrounging on social security and that gay men flaunt themselves rather too much these days. These people, or so the theory goes, resent the swish, promiscuous lifestyles of the metropolitan glitterati; equally, they resent the feckless, idle poor who benefit from state handouts."
