Ups and Downs: Our house

Sunday 11 October 2015

Our house

"Our house" - inverted commas. It was a 4 bedroomed house but of quite modest proportions by today's standards, built in 1926 and called Hartley Cottage - it belonged to Grannie and Grandad, and when they lived there we visited for Christmas and Sunday lunch sometimes. Grannie liked to live as the Victorians did - semi-formally with grand furniture and silver. Cooking and housekeeping was her full-time job - but she had a "daily" to do the cleaning and of course, a laundry delivery (everyone had that before automatic washing machines). I remember Grandad showing me how to thread a needle in the sitting room and I remember reading my aunt's Enid Blyton books - all in hardback - getting them from upstairs in the bedroom. I remember going to stay there when I was about 5 and enjoying the stability of life with Grannie - the meals at regular intervals and the smell of toast and honey in the mornings. Annabel, my cousin, and I spent such a happy holiday staying with the older people and fishing with nets in the river. I remember Grannie leaning over the wall at the bottom of the garden and calling to us to come in.

My grandad died when I was 8 and when I was 9 or 10 Grannie moved down to live in a large flat in Hove and we moved into Grannie's house, and we looked like well-off people. My father liked the rise in his status - commensurate with being a Cambridge-educated man. My father occupied himself creating wardrobes out of plywood and louvre doors, and putting up wallpaper. He mowed the long lawn into stripes (hot work - his brow used to stream as he laboured behind the petrol mower) and the house always looked fairly smart for the 1970s - we had new carpets, woodchip wallpaper and lashings of white gloss paint. But was the roof sound? I wonder? because all our works were cheaply done and cosmetic. and although we looked like a prosperous family my father's Audi was company-owned and my mother was deeply unhappy and given to screaming fits, emotional abuse and depression - she didn't work and was very lonely. But she loved the river. We all loved the river. We had that. On summer evenings the party boat came by playing "Crocodile Rock" and "Ride a White Swan" and I used to envy the people clinking glasses and boogying on the novelty ride of young adulthood. I used to stand at the bottom of the garden and watch the sunset every night. I used to look at the river out of my bedroom window every morning and keep that stillness in my heart all day. There was really nothing I would rather do than mooch about by the river and in the summer, swim in it, and I also rowed on it - and still do at intervals.

Well, the house has been allowed to go to rack and ruin for 40 years until finally the old lady who had lived there very reclusively died, and I went to look at it yesterday. At least it has been cleaned, which I imagine was an awful job. It is, of course, smaller than I remember, although there are 2 good-sized reception rooms. But it is in the most terrible state of disrepair. It is quite interesting to see how awful a house gets if you don't pay for its upkeep. But the state of the garden is quite horrible.

I used to think one day I would be able to rescue our old house, and in the process of repairing it I would repair myself. But I can't afford it - it would cost at least a million pounds, even in its current state. It is pointless to love bricks and mortar. Maybe the house always meant too much to me, I liked it because it was old and felt reliable - it came from a time when houses weren't flashy, when mock tudor and leaded panes were not derided and suburban women went shopping every day with a basket on their arm, whether rich or not. For a long time for me the house was a substitute for a lot of things we didn't have - happy, reliable parents with realistic ambitions, for example.

for sale: my house. £1m :with river views. Probably to be knocked down and redeveloped. Sad, sad, sad.