ANOTHER Valentine’s Day has been and gone without a Valentine’s card, but I wasn’t too disappointed. I moved house just over a year ago and I don’t think Winona Ryder has my new address.

I didn’t get a card from her last year either, so I suppose it got lost in the post that time.

The house I’d moved out of was the first I’d ever bought. Everywhere else I’d lived before I had either rented or was owned by my parents. I hadn’t expected to buy one of my own and I still count myself extremely lucky that I could.

They say many first-time buyers these days rely on the “Bank of Mum and Dad” for a deposit, but in my case it had more to do with the legacy and Grandma and Granddad.

The money I inherited from them, added to a little I’d saved, was enough for a deposit, and I realised that the repayments on a mortgage would be lower than the rent I was paying for a flat.

The insurance, council tax and bills would of course be higher. But at the end of the mortgage I’d still have a house.

I wasn’t looking for a mansion. It only needed to be large enough for a single man of modest tastes and offer a spare room for visitors and for thousands of books – another legacy from my grandfather.

So it seemed to make perfect sense, and it still does. I didn’t have any other loans. I had escaped university before Nick Clegg’s sky-high tuition fees. I don’t run car – I don’t need one and am much too green. I don’t have any children or animals, and wouldn’t let either in my house anyway.

Nor was I in the first flush of youth. I was 39, and many of my better paid contemporaries had bought their own places at younger ages. I didn’t want to be still paying off a mortgage when I retired.

House-hunting was interesting and enjoyable, and satisfied a nosy curiosity as you looked inside other people’s homes. But it was also bewildering, and involved getting to grips with a whole new language.

Estate agent literature was scattered with lots of random capital letters and described houses with phrases such as “well presented” or “containing a wealth of period features” and almost always “deceptively spacious”. When I first read of an “onward chain” I thought it was some kind of anti-burglar device.

And none of the properties I looked at ever seemed to contain a toilet or even a lavatory, only a “WC”.

The money I had inherited was what made it possible for me, but according to property expert Kirstie Allsopp anyone can afford their own house if only they’d cut back on extravagances.

She declares that those young people who claim they can’t save up for a deposit should spend less money on gym membership or a Netflix subscription, or move to a cheaper area.

Living in a cheaper area may of course be difficult if your job happens to be in an expensive one, unless you’re prepared to endure a 200-mile commute.

Ms Allsopp is not the first person to offer money-saving advice to would-be homeowners. An Australian population specialist called Bernard Salt claimed that the young would be able to buy if they didn’t spend their money in “hipster cafés” or stopped eating avocado on toast.

I don’t frequent hipster cafés, I make do with the free-to-air TV channels rather than Netflix, and I put marmalade on my toast. And you’d never catch me in a gym. Is that the only reason I became a homeowner?

The surefire way to make housing more affordable is not to give up avocado on toast, but to build more houses. The more of anything there is, the cheaper it gets.

But no-one likes building on greenfield sites, and private developers are unlikely to want to clean up brownfield sites.

So why doesn’t the Government clean them up and allow councils to build council housing there again, alleviating the shortage? Or are brownfield sites going to stay brown forever?

Allsopp’s advice to would-be buyers contains a certain echo of Marie Antoinette’s alleged comment when told French peasants had no bread: “Let them eat cake.”

She sounds similarly out of touch. And she has admitted that she bought her first property at the age of 21 with “family help”.

Her father is Charles Allsopp, the sixth Baron Hindlip, and a former chairman of Christie’s.

I suppose some banks of mum and dad are more generous than others.