An Englishman’s Home

I'm not materialistic, nationalistic or sexist - but can you blame me for thinking an Englishman’s home is his castle?

After all, for the last 6 months Katja and I have lived in one small room in East Oxford. 

Our expectations were low after living in wooden shacks, and having been far apart we just craved being together.

Believe me, if you live in just one room, you truly get close!  If I wanted to reach the kettle, bed or desktop without leaving my chair, I was in the right place.  If I wanted an excuse to share bodily warmth, two single-glazed windows and a humble heater helped.  At least it was cosy at Christmas.

We didn’t worry about bills, and it was all seriously cheap – allowing me the luxury of turning down a well-paid but soul-destroying job in London to hold out for something better and nearer to home.  

Nor did we have any ties – we were free to take off around the world if we wanted.   We even got to meet ‘interesting’ people, who generously provided a free and uninterrupted supply of environmental cannabis smoke.

So yes – it was basically a scruffy, cramped bedsit.  

Katja and I love each other deeply, but when one bounces in from work whilst the other is sleeping off a night shift – well, one room is just not enough.

Sharing a bathroom with semi-domesticated tenants isn’t ideal either.   And living a few feet above a sociopathic neighbour from hell can be a little wearing.

It wasn’t so much the shabbiness, as much as the inability to do anything about it.  You’ll probably never get round to it, but isn’t enduring frayed carpets and rotten windows easier if you at least have the freedom to change them?

Living on the top floor of a block of flats with only one escape route is worrying enough, without having a dodgy landlord who saves money on little luxuries like working fire alarms.

And all the while I was using up any remaining fraternal love by storing an immodest number of books and other junk in my long-suffering brother’s loft.

So here we are – as of last month, we are the proud owners of a lovely little two-up two-down in Harold Hicks Place, east Oxford – and we just love it.

To be honest I’ve never been that bothered about buying my own house – what’s wrong with renting?  And if Tories espouse a home-owning democracy then I’ll likely lodge out of principle. 

And being a proud owner-occupier is certainly not without its challenges.  For a start, all those bills the landlord used to pay (or dodge) are now our personal responsibility.  When the boiler breaks, roof collapses or – as happened last week –a tree falls in front of your door – it’s now my problem.

Then the monthly repayments kicked in.  Getting a £250k mortgage was hard, so maybe I didn’t scrutinize smiley Santander’s smallprint showing that with interest we’ll eventually pay a total of £365k.  Isn’t that a whopping mark up?  My knowledge of French should have made me question if matching death (mort) and a pledge (gage) is really wise.

It’s a time-consuming business too, even briefly delaying the steady stream of blogs.  Please somebody put me out of my misery if I start Sunday worshipping in home interior stores.

Ah, but it’s actually bliss.  There really is something deeply, atavistically satisfying in coming home from hunting a salary to the comfort of my own home – and hoisting the drawbridge behind me (even if it’s more of a cave than a castle at present).

I’ve even enjoyed some of the mundane homeowner tasks – getting our very own recycling bin from the council was a relished victory, and personal, functioning broadband is bliss.  I particularly enjoyed exercising my right to switch energy suppliers, and now glory in the green glow of Ecotricity.

The little garden is also just wonderful – small and north-facing it may be, but it still houses a couple of budding trees, the odd squirrel, and a testily territorial blackbird and his missus (or should it be brownbird and her mister?).  I regularly stay out there for literally minutes at a time, balancing the risk of hypothermia with the joy of sitting in my own backyard.

Buying a house may sound unexceptional.  But the truth is I feel extraordinarily happy and truly thankful that we have now moved – to a place of our own.