Our house in the middle of our street

I love our house. It's just about Victorian, it is long and thin and goes up quite a way. When we bought it we couldn't afford it and jumped from paying about £30 a month, (I know those were the days!) to about £300 and then that nice Osborne forerunner Nigel Lawson I think it was, put interest rates up to 16%. We had three kids, one job and Jess was on her unbidden way. We lived on lentils.

We have knocked bits down and added bits on over the last 30 years. When we started our business and ran it almost alone we bought original art and pottery. Two years ago we changed style and painted the walls Vert de Terre or some such Farrow and Ballness, Stewart adapted Ikea Billy shelves into posh looking display vehicles for our books and all the new pots and old stuff from my Mom's.

So this is my world now and I am grateful for it. I sit and just soak in the colours and the mix of bits and pieces, the lovely mysterious paintings. The photos of Pete my dog from about 50 years ago, the lovely cracked art nouveau vase my Mom gave me filled with fresias when Jess was born. The monk in the rain. I can do no other. It could be worse.