A lot of articles about London dig up quotations about the city from great literary figures of old. It is almost as hackneyed a method of starting a piece as the infamous dictionary definition which was a great trick in primary school as it made you look scholarly and provided a good excuse to leave the class room and roam the corridors "looking for a dictionary." You would think though, that by the time you got to the stage where you were judged to be so good a writer that people paid you to do it, you would be slightly more resourceful. After all, you wouldn't go to the doctor's and expect them still to prescribe Calpol for every ailment from the sniffles to bowel cancer.

Some of the best descriptions of London though are overheard from everyday Londoners. Two that have stuck in my mind were of that ilk. What is best about them is that they say a lot about the mentality of the people that trotted them out. Thus they give you a sense of place with a bonus of resident. After all, what would London, or any city, be without its population.

A recent favourite, my friend heard someone describe their house as a "1930's semi with a tudor feel." The 1930s semi describes vast swathes of London. It is probably far more representative of a London that Londoners occupy than the gherkin, Belgravia mansions or the Barbican. What was great about the quote though was the shameless reinterpretation of that other most English of design concepts, the mock tudor. What is a "tudor feel" after all? Do the vast kitchens have their own postal disctrict? Is there a maze on the front lawn? Does a guild meet at the serving hatch? No, of course not. The homeowner is trying to tread a fine line. On the one side is her "shame" of admitting to living in a mock tudor house which she feels would classify her as a plumber in a tracksuit. On the other, she is briefing everyone what to expect if they come round so they can't leave the house gossiping viciously about how she didn't mention the black beams and whitewash on the front wall and that she's no better than a plumber in a tracksuit. Simultaneously, she is also trying to engage in that activity that the stunningly mediocre do to get anywhere in the status race: talking up her game. What an informed purchase this particular item was. Why, there must be only a few hundred thousand examples left between Chislehurst and Eltham. What canny ablity to find such a gem. If she had a rusty Ford Escort van in the driveway, would she describe this as an "proto-sports utility vehicle with a seasoned aesthetic"?

A similar favourite of mine was a woman advertising a room in her flat on the company's internal bulletin board where I worked at the time. She described the place as being in "Limehouse Village." It is one thing when estate agents stick quarter or village or quays on to the end of a name like Gasworks, Hangman's or Dungheap but when the residents start doing it too, it is a bad business. What scenes can the Limehouse villager expect to see in this delightful rural idyll? Is that an ancient coaching inn I see before me that has been open since all of England had its first Tudor feel? Is that the local parson cycling merrily past the green waving at the local cricket XI as the birds chirp in the trees only disturbed by the occasional thwack of willow upon leather and the subsequent gentle ripple of applause? Could that be the village postman chatting happily away to the loveable old lady who lives alone in the seven hundred year-old New Cottage who knew his father when he was the village postie and his father's father before that? No, its a Victorian slum with a dock in the middle dotted with the identikit sterile yuppy flats.