Miss Haversham I presume

On Saturday we moved into our new place. As a cost saving measure, and because it wasn’t that far a journey, and because we don’t have that much stuff, we decided it would be a good idea to just carry our things over. I would not recommend this. While a bag may seem reasonably okay to pick up, when you’re carrying a few, along with a backpack and wheelie case, you get tired pretty quickly. It also didn’t help that Brendan insisted we go the long way round for fear that our ex-‘housemates’ were following us. (I think they were just going out for coffee). Another thing is the embarrassment factor. It’s a ‘good’ area: the houses are gorgeous (all white this time rather than all brown) and all the cars quite flash. Walking down the street: BMW, Mercedes, BMW, BMW, Audi, posh couple, SAAB, new four wheel drive, posh couple with stroller, posh couple with posh dog, BMW …and here we come down the street like refugees.

But now that we are in, it’s great. The place itself is big, very old, but very functional. It’s a flat in a Victorian conversion. The first time Brendan met our landlady (who I presume once had the whole house as her family home) he described her to me as Miss Haversham. This has more to do with her age, the grandness of the house and her love of fake plastic flowers and stuffed toy animals… rather than her being jilted at the altar and never getting over it – she was married for forty years and currently has a ‘lover’ (her word).

We are trading space for mod cons. The place doesn’t have a TV*. When we asked whether there was an aerial point we could plug into, she suggested a set-top aerial, commenting, ‘Some people put aerials on their houses, don’t they, but that’s quite a modern thing’. Okay. The place is quiet – in her words: ‘The only sound you will hear are the bullfrogs in mating season’. But really she seems very nice and since we have moved in we haven’t seen her once and I don’t think you can ask for better than that.

*Currently 6 days without TV and counting – how long will it be before we crack?