BUYING a house is a lot like dating. These days you don't need to schlep down to the nearest estate agent window to peruse potential suitors.

You simply download a handful of apps to your phone, the likes of s1homes, Zoopla and Rightmove being the house-hunting equivalent of Tinder or eHarmony.

Swipe, swipe, swipe. Uuuurgh. Nope. Next. Wow. Stunning. Nah. Too high maintenance. On and on it goes. Then you find a match.

Your heart starts to beat a little faster. A viewing – aka first date – is arranged. If you like what you see there is a second viewing. Maybe a third.

By now you're falling in love. It's time to settle down. A fairy-tale happy ending beckons, hopefully with fitted carpets and a swanky kitchen island. Maybe a gazebo.

Then just as you're mentally picking out furniture and imagining the joy of a separate utility room … Boom! A cash buyer swoops in to pay £3K over home report. It's like being jilted at the altar when your betrothed runs off with another lover.

Once the shock and heartache subside, you vow to get back in the game. Battle-scarred but hopefully wiser (although probably not). Swipe, swipe, swipe. That one is handsome. Ah, yes, very sweet. Yet, deep down, you still yearn for the house that got away.

I have a friend who tells me that he periodically thinks about a flat he missed out on buying 25 years ago. He waxes lyrical about its beautiful, sweeping hallway with the same dewy-eyed reverence as one might recount an unrequited teenage crush.

Yup, it's a tricky old business this house buying. Brutal. Thrilling. Packed with hidden peril. A bit like being a character in Game of Thrones, it requires nerves of steel and wily cunning.

There are times you will slightly lose your mind. The other day I was swooning over parquet flooring when I heard a cough behind me. I hadn't noticed the editor appear in a puff of smoke.

My flustered, red-faced mumblings about "researching a story" were somewhat hampered by the fact it wasn't anywhere near the ballpark of what I was meant to be writing about (ie the evolution of chest hair among Hollywood's leading men).

Current status: making some lacklustre attempts to read home reports. The search continues …

Everybody needs good neighbours

I'VE been a flat dweller since I was 18. In my younger days, when for the best part of a decade I lived alone, I drew comfort from knowing there were other humans living around me in similar cubes called home.

When my husband and I initially moved to our current flat in a Glasgow tenement block there was a lovely family living above us. But then they left for a house with a garden and were replaced by two 20-something guys who described themselves as "music producers".

If the alarm bells hadn't started ringing at that point, they certainly began when the dynamic duo got down to the business of "producing" their music. It was a task attacked with the measured zeal of someone who had been trained in torture techniques.

They "worked" at all hours of the day and night. Their signature sound involved a heavy bass coupled with an escalating whining noise that put me in mind of a dentist's drill being murdered.

The music producers left a couple of years ago. Their departure coincided with us being on holiday, so sadly I missed the exciting drama which apparently involved a particularly loud recording session being brought to a premature end when the police were called by a fellow neighbour.

For several months there was a peaceful interlude. Then the current incumbent of the flat upstairs arrived. At first it was bearable. The lumbering thump of footsteps I could just about cope with. Ditto the occasional crashes and thuds of something very heavy being dragged across the floor (hopefully not a body).

But soon there came a plethora of new sounds. Like a piano immediately above our bedroom, a self-playing model programmed to produce the kind of old-timey tunes you would expect in a Western saloon bar.

Adding to this perplexing cacophony is a cupboard that creaks loudly like an over-egged sound effect from 1980s children's TV series The Trap Door. I half expect to hear the master of the castle (ironically known as "The Thing Upstairs") bellowing: "Berk! Feed Me!"

The final straw was a running machine. When cranked into operation it sounds like a car with a flat tyre being wrestled by an angry elephant.

I'm ready for life in the 'burbs. Show me to the nearest available bungalow.

Emoji confusion

A NIFTY new function has been added to the social media platform Instagram providing a shortcut to all your most used emojis.

What may have been even more helpful is a cheat sheet guide explaining what some of the more confusing icons and symbols actually mean.

I think most of us would admit to falling foul of an emoji-themed Lost in Translation moment. A friend's sister had been using what she thought was a candle to represent thoughts and prayers in times of sorrow. It was, in fact, a nose.

Another common mistake is confusing the crying with laughter emoji for conveying pathos. Such as in response to a Facebook post about a cat being run over.

If you are into gardening/cooking please note that the aubergine emoji has been hijacked to mean something altogether more phallic. Sheesh! Is nothing sacred?

I'm a bit of an emoji oversharer. It began with throwing in the occasional smiley face or thumbs up, but has since escalated to avocados, martini glasses and a smattering of air kisses.

I was rather proud of one recent well-thought out stream of emojis to convey a friend's upcoming holiday – car, ocean, ferry, tent, sunshine, beach umbrella, ice cream, cocktail, sunset – only to later discover that she hadn't updated the software on her phone for yonks.

Instead, all that appeared was a long row of question marks. Cue Edvard Munch-esque scream face.