Hello from the Derbyshire Dales, one and all. We are staying in the belly button of England thanks to some lovely friends who have gone off on holiday and left my husband and me and the wild ones in their house! Now we see how normal human beings live. I am like a hamster let loose from the cage that is my flat in central London (grateful as I am to have it, we are tired of permanent rugby scrum living, much as we love the bokke). I keep running from sofa to sofa, living room to living room, bedroom to bedroom, like a hamster on speed. I tear up and down the stairs in top gear like I have eaten a Ferrari for breakfast and a Lamborghini for lunch (it’s Morris Minor for dinner, I’m exhausted by then). If you were as scatty as me you would need to whizz up and down the stairs hundreds of times a day too - for all the kids things that you kept forgetting all over this house that is the size of a playing field, only cut up and arranged on levels in large squares.
The kids and us have been running round and round on the lawn like lunatic dogs let loose on a beach. Grass outside the door that is underfoot rather than underhand like the stuff that is dealt outside the door of our London block! You can park your car in the drive or in the Sainsbury's behind your house. You can buy your groceries and park your trolley outside your garden gate even and they don't mind since they nicked your road parking space! It's magical. In London we pay a yearly wage for residents parking and usually have to park three miles away. Middle England is a real eye opener. Folks are real friendly too and they aren't nutters! They stop and chat and coo at the little 'uns and they don't even know us!
All this house living has gone to our heads and we are fantasizing about having a home of our own again. We almost bought a house in April but were scuppered at the last minute. Today we browsed the second hand shops and bought a framed etching of Regents Park from The Illustrated London News, from June 1846. If only we could buy a house in RP on nineteenth century prices! I told you we were fantasizing but upsizing in your head is a good start. You need to be a zillionaire to buy a house in RP now. I am grateful for my hutch there, but a house…oh a house…my hutch for a house.
