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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Zoe Williams

I haven’t borrowed money from my mother since 1994. But if the banks won’t lend me any …

A woman and man laughing at a dinner party
‘Did you, or did you not, spend Saturday night at a dinner party, talking about interest rates?’ Photograph: Thomas Barwick/Getty Images (Posed by models.)

‘Mortgages”, at the turn of this century, used to be a byword for the most boring conversations on earth. That’s how you measured whether or not you’d got old and lost your vim and rebellion: did you, or did you not, spend Saturday night at a dinner party, talking about interest rates?

Now, everyone is talking about mortgages, and these conversations are wild. They’ve got pace, they’ve got pathos, they’ve got suspense and dread, they’ve got a heap of intergenerational struggle. It’s like Chekhov with decimals.

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