There are loads of items on my unlikely-to-come-true wish list for the next five years. In order of improbability, some of these are: The Liberal Party having more MPs than my immediate family has members; the discovery of a clean energy source that results in more than a feature in the New Scientist; an opposition that makes Cameron’s job harder, not easier; an economy that doesn’t look like a giant octopus centred on the City; and a house price crash.

You’ll notice I put the house price crash last. That’s because, although I don’t think it’s very likely, it could happen. I’m not going to list signs of a coming property apocalypse (propapocalypse?) because there are always signs. Like everyone else, I’ve given up looking for straws in the wind; there have been so many of these, I could have built a haystack over the last decade.

Nonetheless, I can see how it could happen – and because the bubble is now so big, once it started it would quickly become totally unstoppable.