You can still get a decent house". In theory, anyway.
"The house, in theory, is a miniature country villa," Mr. Andrea said.
She asks him to describe his "dream house," her theory being that only by dreaming of freedom can Mr. Wallace achieve it.
As Lloyd Evans put it in a Spectator column last month after buying his first house: "In theory, we're halfway to being millionaires.
Prospective buyers will be less enticed by an empty, stale-smelling house, the theory goes, than by a meticulously kept home decorated with high-quality furnishings.
Advice offered includes placing conkers in the house, the theory being that spiders and other creepy-crawlies are scared of them.
Then, as if to blow down the heavy doors of collective silence, along comes Hellbade: Senua's Sacrifice, an ambitious title by the brave creatives over at indie house Ninja Theory (Enslaved, Heavenly Sword).
Because her job consists of cleaning the office kitchen and serving coffee and food, she knows that she can probably do something similar somewhere that is not 35 miles from her house, in theory.
How these stories have played out gives another sense of the city then, and now: in the past, unsatisfactory housing – in theory, at least – was a political matter, whereas now, given that the houses here are either private or rented from housing associations, it seems to rattle around that inconclusive part of local life reserved for customer complaints.
These anecdotal stories ended up inspiring a paper coauthored with Steve Sexton and Junjie Wu, "How High Gas Prices Triggered the Housing Crisis: Theory and Empirical Evidence".
