You reach a certain age. You have a certain amount of money in the bank which, for once, you don't want to spend on expensive wine, holidays to odd places or a the latest wonderous gadget that will secure your membership of the painfully cool club. So you decide to buy a house. A few months later, after 2 nervous breakdowns, enough petrol consumption to make the average American oil baron rub his hands together with glee and a newly developed tic whenever the word 'solicitor' is mentioned, you move into your new abode of loveliness. This is what I ended up with:

After the initial settling in period you make friends with the local woodworm, find out the banister comes away from the wall when you touch it, and the heating never gets the house about -10oC. And that's on the first day! Yes, in the words of those lovely people, estate agents, the house 'had character' and 'needed some modernisation'. Shocker. After pouring the GDP of a small African country into redoing it we are nearly there. Most rooms are decorated, the woodworm met a gristly end and I can now utter the words "I'm TOO hot!" on a cold Scottish night thanks to the new snazzy heating. Haven't fixed the banister. The entertainment value was too great when every guest ripped it off the wall and then, mortified that they had wrecked my house, spend 10 mins trying to reattach it and clear up the mess. He..He…He.

Now, its actually home. Getting a Dave and 2 cats in helped. I still get frustrated with owning an old house, especially when the bath leaks into the downstairs rooms, or the windows are drafty, or strange cracks appear in worrying places, but I wouldn't swap it for the best Barrett home in the world. Unless the Barrett home had stables and an indoor arena. Might consider it then. But that's not likely. So no…I wouldn't swap it.