168

A brick wall.  A plain little black painted gate, constantly left open by the steady stream of people dropping pizza delivery leaflets through our letterbox. Window boxes, alternately cherished and abused (currently full of dying hyacinths and sad dry looking ivy). A tiny little concrete ‘front garden’ : a front garden, really, in no sense of the word. Just a little concrete space, for our wheelie bin, and where the nice man from Abel & Cole can leave our box of organic veggies every week.

Into the hall now: green. Rather badly painted, if I’m honest. The first room to be decorated, attacked with fervour that dwindled more with every fresh wall, with every coat. The wall on the immediate left of the front door as you come in definitely needs a second coat. But let’s not dwell on that. In the hall, you’ll see the process that I have told Jack is called ‘style creep’. For some reason, the style that I hope will one day spread across the entire house like a hug has begun at the front door. Above the door, in the fanlight, I have bought frosted style plastic, with the number ‘168’ cut out. Even now, just knowing that it’s there, above the door, looking like original Victorian glass, gives me a warm glow and makes me feel impossibly pleased with myself. By the door, I have put up coat hooks. Tremblingly, falteringly, the noise from the wall unfeasibly loud, the row of hooks were the first thing for which I used our drill. (It has changed my life. But more about this another time…) By the front door is a stripey door mat of which I am excessively fond. Hanging on the wall is a huge, beautiful mirror with a gold frame, which I found on ebay. The combined effect of all this is that if you stand in the hall, and squint, and block out certain other rooms with your hand, you can convince yourself that the whole house is just as coherently, beautifully decorated, and not the rather student-y hotchpotch that it really is.

Talking of studenty hotchpotches, best to gloss over the front room. It’s tiny. I mean, really tiny. Similarly, let’s not dwell on the garden. Someone else’s abandoned patio, more like. I promise myself we’ll do something with it, but for the moment, I’m ignoring it. Apart from today, when I noticed that, bluebells have sprung up all around the edges of the dodgy paving. The boundaries of the garden are swimming in blue – like a forgotten promise of sunshine and picnics and bicycle rides.

Our bathroom is a strange shape, managing to combine being huge with at the same time not really having enough room for anything. However, I have shelved out a small alcove behind the door. Although the shelves aren’t, perhaps, of professional quality, they are shelves, they are useable, and they were attached to the wall by my own fair hands. And for this, as with so much else, I love them dearly and can often be found standing in the bathroom just staring at them with blind adoration.

Ascending the stairs is an exciting moment. Jack and I spent so long looking at flats when we decided to buy, that we had all but forgotten the fact that houses existed. When we came over to a considerably less swanky part of London, and were shown around houses for the day, I became quite over-wraught and had to have a small break, like a small child at a swimming party, overdosed on sugar and chlorine. "Stairs!" I said, rather tearfully, to Jack. "I know." His voice was soothing. "But, really, stairs!" "Shhhh. I know, I know." "With an upstairs and a downstairs, and everything. And no one living above or below you!" The sheer joy of a house. Even if it is a house that is probably smaller than a lot of flats. The bliss of it. (See also: The Attic, presence of, and The Understair Cupboard, usefulness of.)

It’s a little house. It’s a plain little London townhouse, like thousands of others. Ground-floor bay window, two windows on the first floor looking onto the street. It’s a Victorian house, but at some point a previous owner must have thought it was a good idea to rip out anything inside that might let you know this was the case. All the fireplaces are gone. The old, tall skirting boards that I think must have been in each room. Ditto the coving and picture rails. The garden is north-facing, with someone else’s wall at the end of it, so gets very little light. The sitting room is so small that I’m not sure how we’ll get a sofa in. It’s a normal, plain, unexceptional, little mid-terrace house undistinguishable from any other terraced house in London.

And yet I love it. I passionately adore it. Every time Jack and I have been away, we unlock the door, and we enter our hall we say fondly to each other, "Our little house." "Look at our little house." And we cluck, like loving parents. I have become obsessed with interior decoration magazines, and have spent I-don’t-care-to-think how many hours since we moved in imagining elaborate colour schemes for each room. We have a study. An actual study! We have a spare room! We have an upstairs hall, with a little built-in cupboard which I have named the linen cupboard. So far, it’s full of old, frayed towels. But, for me, the name ‘linen cupboard’ suggest a future for this cupboard which is full of piles of lavender-smelling pastel coloured sheets, heaped up like the soothingly complementary colours of cotton tops in a branch of Gap, ironed and folded and tied with ribbon. It suggests a time when I, having just pulled a tray of cakes out of the oven, will come upstairs to make up the bed for guests, and will pull out matching guest towels in crisp white: fluffy and embroidered with white flowers. The linen cupboard, in short, speaks volumes to me of a lifestyle that I don’t have, and furthermore, would probably hate. But, of course, that doesn’t stop me.

Our little house. So perfectly ordinary. Not tremendously well-located. So very heavily mortgaged. In need of further decoration. In need of some more furniture.

But so sweepingly and passionately loved, because it’s ours.

therumtumtugger
xxx

This entry is for A’ishah, who is moving house, and whose entries about her house reminded me how disproportionately I love ours.