Sometimes, property life collides with real life, and I find myself talking like a property person to an audience that is either hostile or indifferent.

I was reminded of this last week on reading the obituary of Professor John Barron, Master of St Peter’s College Oxford, until he retired in 2003.

While extolling the life of this great Hellenist, the Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘His other great passion was building. Three new buildings were added to the college on his watch; one of the disappointments of his time at Oxford was that his desire to acquire the land around Oxford Prison for St Peter’s never came off. As ever, he bore the outcome with equanimity.’

‘Equanimity’ is not the word I would have used.
I used to go to social events at St Peter’s while my son was an undergraduate there. The portly master would bellow: ‘Who is this terrible fellow Trevor Osborne? I’m told he’s gone bust before.’

Masters of Oxford colleges boom rhetorical questions, and do not expect answers.
The reason for Barron’s anger was that the Trevor Osborne Property Group had outbid St Peter’s in buying the prison.

Barron wanted the prison as overflow space for his college; Osborne succeeded in converting the prison into a Malmaison Hotel.

I tried to engage Barron in conversation, telling him that Trevor Osborne had a reputation in conservation, and had turned Wimbledon Town Hall into a shopping centre before his former company, Speyhawk, went into receivership in 1993.

But the Master would not enter into an argument and was never curious as to why the mere mother of an undergraduate knew so much about his adversary.

He continued on all social occasions to hope for the worst to happen to the Trevor Osborne Property Group.

When it was time to return to Oxford for the age-old Latin graduation ceremony at the Sheldonian, I stayed in one-and-a-half former prison cells at Malmaison.
Last Christmas, Osborne hosted a dinner at Oxford Castle, next to the former prison, to celebrate winning 12 awards for the prison conversion.

I hope Barron went to his grave reconciled to the fact that his adversary had done a good job.

Like all journalists, I try to circumvent the brush-off from an official spokesman by taking a direct approach.

In retail reporting, that means,  telephoning a branch of a chain store to ask anyone who answers the phone: ‘When’s your last day of trading?  I want to come to the closing down sale.’

The answer is often: ‘We’re not closing down.’  This is followed by a yell across the shop: ‘No one’s said we’re closing down, have they?’

The last time I received this response was from Talbots in Regent Street, where closure and replacement by LK Bennett had already been reported in the trade press.

Why had no one told the staff that Talbots was retreating to the United States?

Like anyone in property journalism, I have been faced with a dilemma, after an agent has said: ‘We’ve got the unit on the market, but you can’t write anything, because they haven’t told the staff.’

Why not?

Invariably, I practice self-censorship because to me it is just a paragraph in Property Week and a chance to bargain-hunt; for the agent it is just a fee for lease assignment. For shop workers it is redundancy.

As the economy weakens, I expect to face this dilemma many times in the coming months, just as I did in the early 1990s. Then I telephoned the Birmingham office of Erdman Lewis to find out about the office closure, only to find no one knew the office was closing.

In Paignton last month, the woman at the Somerfield check-out was talking frantically to her customers about the future. She read the newspapers.  She knew that the Co-op had bought Somerfield, but no one had told her about future employment.

As a journalist this may sound self-defeating, but, my plea to retailers and other employers is:  don’t let me find out that you are closing a shop or office before you tell the staff.

I often bluff about my extensive travels. Wigan Pier? Of course I have been to Wigan Pier.

When I was invited to breakfast at the Southwark Lido, I pretended I knew the lovingly listed and restored 1930s open air swimming pool, reopened to hardy swimmers.

In reality, I wondered how I could have worked in Southwark for five years without having discovered its lido.

When I arrived at 100 Union Street SE1, the joke was on me.

The quirky developer, Roger Zogolovitch, chairman of Solid Space, had taken the site for which he had consent for offices, flats and restaurants and installed a lido. It was less than a meter wide and as long as the average ornamental fish pond.

As part of the celebrations for the London Festival of Architecture, Zogolovitch had covered the site with shingle and installed 10 beach huts and a few dozen deckchairs. Festival workers lived in the beach huts during the month-long festival.

It was a cheerful way to keep interest alive in one of many hundred of development sites where nothing else is happening in property development.

Zogolovitch was upbeat as the trains thundered behind and above him on Southwark viaduct and the social housing tenants on the opposite side of Union Street must have wondered was going on.

He called his un-started development SoSo to catch the glamour of Soho and Noho.

Yet the whole cheerful open air breakfast was reminiscent of the early 1990s.

Then, everyone enjoyed stories of naïve shed agents who leased out empty warehouses unknowingly for ecstasy-fuelled raves. My own experiences were more cerebral because office agents hired gold chairs and experimental theatre companies to try out new works in unlettable office space.

I have not yet swum in Southwark Lido, and don’t know whether it will be reinstated for the next London Festival of Architecture. But maybe in this downturn, I’ll discover the next Pinter of Ionesco.

Occasionally, I am first into the office at Property Week.  Invariably I am first to leave.

When the computer shuts down at 5.31, there is an hour to idle away between leaving Ludgate House and arriving as first guest at a party.

If the event is in the City, I take sanctuary on a seat in a churchyard.  If it is in the West End I shop at H&M.

But on July 1st I found the coolest place in London for the pre-party hour: More London.

I had only ever been to particular buildings on the south side of the Thames by Tower Bridge, like City Hall and the Hilton, and so I had never appreciated the implementation of the Ken Shuttleworth masterplan. The buildings seem tweaked to frame the Tower of London or the Gherkin.

On the hottest day of the year, children paddled in the fast-running water of the gutters between the buildings.  The water erupted into jets outside the Gaucho and Strada restaurants.  The children ran forward as the jets subsided and were soaked when the water leapt into seven foot geysers. Everyone was part of the fun; fathers rushed with children in pushchairs through the deluge, while mothers stood at the side with outstretched towels.  They were so prepared that it must have been an organised activity. (‘Come on, mummy, we’re going to run through the More London fountains.’)

There were no prohibiting notices, and no evidence of Princess Diana fountain-type accidents as in Kensington Gardens.

The only voice to come on the loud speaker was plumy and familiar.  It came from the Scoop, the amphitheatre beside City Hall.

Mayor Boris Johnson was launching Gay & Lesbian Pride Week.  The Scoop, unlike the fountains, was surrounded by barricades and policed by intimidating bouncers.

The gays and lesbians were falling in love with Boris, who said how much he looked forward to going on their march in this city where everyone can contribute, not judged by their ethnicity nor sexual orientation.   Ken Livingstone could not have put it better.   More London brings out the best in everyone.

A woman speaking in broken English asked me: ‘Who is this man?’

I said that it is the Mayor, and asked her where she came from.

She said she was from the Czech Republic, adding: ‘My friends have told me about this man.  They said they couldn’t believe he was elected.  He’s different, isn’t he?’

The Lawrence Graham press party was different too.  After on-line voting from the guests the lawyers chose a Middle Eastern theme, complete with belly dancers, kebabs in the staff canteen.

Catherine Diggle, the real estate partner, said that she had never seen a better use of public space than More London.

Stephen Stephens said that Lawrence Graham partners had voted to relocate to More London three hours after the neighbouring Norton Rose partners had come to the same decision. Yet only a few partners knew the name of the secretive landlord who bought More London from the Kuwaitis.

As I left with my goody bag containing Turkish delight and a smart pen, the gays were still partying in the Scoop.  I hope that the rest of the summer’s pre-party hours will be as entertaining.