Home

I fell in love with the place as soon as I laid eyes on it. It was the sunlight streaming in through the windows and spilling out onto the bare floorboards that did it. That and the birdsong trilling around the tree-tops only meters from the window sills.

They say love is blind.

I didn’t notice the floorboards that needed to be replaced or the cracks in the ceiling. The distinct lack of carpet didn’t register as my imagination took me on a romantic journey, where I, the creative bohemian type, fully installed and settled into the vast Victorian loft worked away furiously at those long overdue tasks she’d been too restricted to labour at in previous cramped abodes.

I didn’t notice the narrow corridor at the bottom of my staircase. The same corridor that would restrict furniture over a certain size. I didn’t consider that being three stories up in the middle of a substantial terrace might prove problematic and that big strong men would have to be enlisted to drag appliances along lengthy pathways and up the stairs.

Instinctively I marked out where my desk would be. My working space. A space I had been craving for some time. The potentially tricky practicalities were insignificant in the light of the benefits of this move.

Finally, some room to maneuver.

Once all my boxes have been hoisted up the stairs, once a lick of paint has covered the gaudy blue of the previous occupant’s colour scheme, once the snagging, age old nails in the boards have been hammered back in. I know that my new home and I will be very happy together.