Many moons ago G and I visited friends in Kenya, and apart from all the memorable animals and places (and flights), the one thing that we took away was "Kenya Blue" - a term which entered our private lexicon as it was a bright blue paint which was absolutely everywhere.
We speculated that a "paint tanker" must have run aground off the coast and that a zillion gallons of freshly mixed blue gloss paint had come onto the market at almost no cost - thus everyone used it for everything - houses, cars, bikes, doors, (graffitti), walls - absolutely anything and anywhere. Blubiquitous indeed.
Well, here on the Isle of Man, there is something similar, but in this case it is silver grey - and carpet, not paint.
We have started looking inside properties now, advancing from looking at estate agents ads, through checking some out on the web and even into the "give it a drive-by" to check out location and kerb appeal.
The one thing that hits us is that every property has the same interior decor (actually the same as in our rented house) and everywhere has pale greyish wood effect paintwork, odd walls papered in silver grey pattern, grey furniture (so silver sofa perfect for silver surfers) and everyone has silver grey carpet.
It is as if the island carpet suppliers all ran out of their usual stock, then someone ran across a couple of hundred foorball fields of silver grey carpet at a ridiculous price, so bought the whole shebang and shipped it to the IoM - whereupon it became the only carpet available here.
Now don´t get me wrong, it is not unpleasant - and not tooo impractical as tradesmen are trained to take their boots off at the door, or pull on "crime scene plastic overshoes". I also have to like anything that is (basically) steel grey just on pure naming terms!
So far, and knowing what to expect decor-wise, we have looked inside two.
The first one in Port Erin was a very badly extended small bungalow on a small plot amongst dozens of similarly extended bungalows (viewing time about 4 minutes), then last week to (another) badly extended bungalow on a nice plot in a very nice area (but with a "hobbitt" vibe as the extension had been done piece-meal and there were lots of small rooms, doorways, cupboards and little else. The garden was ok, but the flagstones leaning against 10m of wall on one side could have covered up a bunch of problems (below the crappy condition pebble-dashing) - a bit like the set of 3 large drain covers outside the back door.
You may start to see a pattern forming here - there was obviously a building boom in the seventies where they built lots of small bungalows with (maybe) two bedrooms and a bathroom - and everyone has extended - sideways, up (and even below).
Nearly everything we are seeing has an added "dormer" with great accommodation upstairs and small rooms downstairs. We are into deja-vu, and not just as they are all the same, but as it is like house-hunting in Essex, where everything had been (usually badly) modified by the owner or his mates.
Now there are some new bungalows - and we actually set off to have a look at one at the weekend - but when we got near (say 5 miles) there was a road closed / diversion sign. So we diverted, then ran across another diversion, then another. Eventually we drove about 20 miles in a huge circle around where we wanted to be. Then we gave up and went home - there to read in a local paper that there was a huge charity bike ride "in the north" with a double column list of road closures. Sometime you get the feeling that somewhere is not for you.
(But the interior photos showed that was all silver carpet and steel grey anyway).
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