You know the drill: you’re sat next to someone at a dinner party – not a friend, not yet an enemy. You don’t want to resort to cliché too soon by discussing the weather, nor can you be seen to raise the burning issue of the host’s recent facelift. So you find safe ground, the new ‘what do you do?’, which is: ‘when did you fix your mortgage?’
If your answer is five years at 1 per cent, keep it to yourself. No one likes a smart aleck. Conversely, if you had no choice but to remortgage at the peak, feel no guilt in helping yourself to the last of the Pinot Noir – you’re drinking for a nation.
