Thanks to Boris Johnson, I now know what a vitrine is, as in:

If you are anything like me, you can't help salivating when you walk past the glistening vitrines of the estate agents.

What's more, the sentence suggests I'm something like Boris Johnson, which is surprising and alarming to equal degrees. Johnson's blogging about his own desperate addiction to property porn. It's "rude to discuss property prices", he says (what must he make of the Rat and Mouse?), before turning around a couple of elementary algebraic equations revealing his own recent property profits. The article goes on to illustrate with some force the average non-saving Brit's reliance on bricks-and-mortar to get through the tough times. We have almost twice as much invested in our homes as in our pensions. Of course, they're only worth that if property prices remain at a level that continue to squeeze out first-time buyers (who also aren't saving for their pensions). We've heard it before, I know. But it's put eloquently by Boris, whom we like a whole lot more now that we know the truth about his personal problems with property particulars.