It’s quite a while since I was eight years old and had school topics to write about, but I don’t recall a brochure for a house for sale being one of them. Still, we live in property-obsessed times (despite the current downturn), and my children are growing up in Islington, a part of north London where two out of three shops on the main road are estate agents. It’s probably quite natural, then, that writing an advertisement for a house might be a class activity, and that my son Gabriel, 8, might employ a bit of estate-agent jargon when fulfilling it. Even so, I didn’t think his execution would be quite so fully rounded, so to speak.

“This rare opportunity,” the composition confidently begins, “to buy this wonderfully entertaining house . . . this exclusive offer . . . a classic design by Foxtons.” No, I didn’t know that Foxtons had branched out from estate agency into architecture, but never mind. More important, how does he know about Foxtons, and how can he imitate so perfectly the urgent thrust of the language used by its staff? Clearly, the poor child has been adversely influenced by having a property anorak for a mother. A mother whose favoured holiday jaunt is nosing around an estate agency and whose favoured bedtime reading is, well, literature such as this. Am I really so shallow? Why have I not raised my children to enjoy an appreciation of, say, wild animals or poetry, rather than agent-speak?

Let us continue. The list of contents of the “entertaining” house delivers a perfect rundown of all the things generally considered vital these days - and perhaps not just in the mind of a child. It has a gym, a private cinema, “quadruple” parking, sports fields, a games arcade and a balcony. Oh, and a landscaped garden. “You couldn’t live in more luxury than this,” my ambitious young scribe continues. Well, presumably not, because the house (which comes in metric rather than imperial measurements) is bigger than Buckingham Palace at “90,000 square metres”, with five “fit for king”-size bedrooms and a “double oak staircase”.

Naturally, with such a flash pad, and with all that equipment in the games arcade to worry about, a decent security system is paramount. We’ve not been broken into for years, at least not since Gabriel was born, but maybe the morning ritual of alarm-setting prior to walking to school has made a deep impression on his childish mind. “The alarm system is proven to not even leting the sneekyest robbers in,” he writes. “The door only opens with the best most unthinkable.” Unthinkable what? We are not told.

We then consider the location of this mansion, which is newly built (no fuddy-duddy Georgian rubbish here) and “the best family house in London”. Where is it? This is where my son and Foxtons part company. The luxury building is not anywhere a London agent would deem top-notch, but rather somewhere an eight-year-old boy would consider deluxe: “This house overlooks Wembley.” With perks, too: “You get tickets to international matches.” Well, I might be to blame for the rest, but here I blame the influence of Mr Millard entirely, as I have no interest in “international matches” of any description. And imagine waking up to a close-up of the great Wembley arch. Horrendous, even when viewed from a “fit for king” bedroom.

At least the boy has grasped the necessity of a quick sale, which in these anxious days is embedded within the cerebral cortex of even the most junior estate agent. “This is a once in a lifetime offer,” the prospectus urges. And, quite properly, it doesn’t hit you with the price tag until you have been wooed by the mouthwatering description: “Only £15m, so why not come down today and buy this newly built house?” (Quite reasonable, I would say, but then the location might have something to do with it.)

For inspiration, his teacher had given the class a list of a dozen or so useful words and phrases: “modern”, “detached”, “spacious”, “wide patio doors”, “clean”, “bright”, “light”, “new roof”. It would seem most of this bourgeois world-view has been ignored by my son in favour of a bigger picture altogether. You can forget all about the genteel world of clean detached houses with patio doors; here is a stance far more in keeping with a Hello! photo spread, in which the house is gigantic, security is paramount, there is a games arcade and Premier League footballers (along with, presumably, their Wags) are but a stone’s throw away. How on earth have I encouraged such worldliness in someone I like to think is still enchanted by Tintin and Horrid Henry?

And, like anyone in a chalk-striped suit who drives a branded Mini, this junior marketeer is not about to let a commercial opportunity pass him by. After I mentioned tentatively that I might use his work as inspiration for this column, he thought about it for a minute or two before politely suggesting a suitable payment into his savings account. He’ll doubtless go far. It’s just the road he seems destined to take that I worry about.

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