Modern couples who would

rather sell up and move than negotiate a flight of stairs with a pram have irked HARRY COLE this week ...

Browsing a property page recently I read a very sad tale. It seemed a well-known (though not by me) interior designer named Cara la Puma and her aristocratic husband Lord Hardup, (that wasn't his name, but I can't remember it now) recently bought an apartment at The Lycee, Kennington.

As the apartment was not on the ground floor and she was pregnant at the time, neither herself nor his lordship had realised the enormity of the problem they had given themselves.

As the lady now admits, they had simply not reckoned on the hardship of I quote "Bumping a pram up several flights of stairs, not to mention the weekly supply of nappies".

I am happy to say the unfortunate couple have now seen the error of their ways and placed the property on the market for just over £500,000.

I just can't begin to tell you how pleased I am for the poor dears. Just think of all those weekly struggles up those dreadful stairs while lumbered with disposable nappies, rusks and even a pram!

Well do you know, I was distraught for them, I honestly was. In fact their struggle against adversity was so impressive I decided to seek out The Lycee for myself.

I mean there can't be many flats on Kennington costing more than £500,000 quid can there?

Strangely, while familiar with the area, it did take me a while to find The Lycee. However, when I did, I instantly realised I knew it quite well. In fact, my wife and my niece knew it even better. You see my wife left school from there when she was 14 and it was simply known then as Kennington Road Elementary School. Thirty years later, it was my niece's primary school.

Just think, Mister Wood, the school caretaker, didn't know his good fortune. There he was living rent-free in the old school cottage where nowadays a classroom alone would cost the equivalent of a yacht or six Rolls Royces.

Then there was the horror of poor Ms Cara la Puma's stairs. Now stairs are something I really do know about.

Our old tenements (Queens Buildings) had 12 flights of narrow stairs, no lifts and hundreds of kids. At any time of the day, if you were bumping a pram up the stairs, you were certain to meet someone bumping one down.

Plump Mrs Phelps even had twins in her pram fat twins at that, and none too clean!

If you were particularly unlucky, you might even meet the coalman, because almost every flat in the building had a weekly delivery of coal and coalmen gave way to no one. If you were six flights down with your pram and he was six flights up with a hundred weight of best Welsh coal, bloody unlucky, you back-tracked six flights.

I think it's as well his lordship is now selling. I mean, constantly charging up and down stairs with bags of nappies could play merry hell with his coronet.

November 19, 2001 11:05