House

Call me what you want: babyish, greedy, impatient, spoilt.....I don't care. However, I have reached the point of being jealous of a two year old. Her name is Millie (Amelia May if you want to be formal) and she is the daughter of my friends Rob and Rachel and this is her house. Her own special house. Put together by her Father Rob in the garden of their new house (note the beer bottles on the table proving that Rob must have worked hard). So, Rob and Rachel have a house, and now Millie has her own house in the garden! I want a bloody house!

I have been living in a flat since 1996 and by the looks of things I have five more years of flat living to come. I know a lot of my readers are Londers and that you will therefore be thinking - "so what, doesn't everyone live in a flat?" But no, in the land of civilisation (Yorkshire) everyone has a house by the time they are about 19. I'm not exagerating. If you go to Uni you rent a house with your mates (which I did in Liverpool). If you stay at home with your parents then you still live in a house, if you rent or buy your own place - you rent or buy a house (usually a cute little cottage). If you are a thief, drug dealer or other such delinquent then chances are you get a council house. One way or another - you get a house.

So, by choosing to live in very large cities, such as London and Barcelona, I have done myself out of a house. It didn't bother me too much for a while - mainly because I bought a duplex/maisonette in London in order to pretend to myself that I did actually have a house, due to the stairs you see. However, I've had it now with flats. I can't take much more. Its become a point of principal now - I want a god damned house. I want a garden. I want a drive to put my car on. I want a garage to store loads of crap in whilst the car is on the drive. I want proper neighbours - who water your plants for you. I want my own front door. I don't want to have to listen to other people: walking above me, walking below me, shouting, playing crap music, watching rubbish tv loudly, banging hammers, banging on my door to tell me to turn my music down.......I could go on. I'm sure you know what I mean.

City people (like Londoners) and Spanish people (because they all live in flats) don't seem to get as annoyed by the problems of commual living, but it drives me mad. I feel like I am still in a university residence, or worse still, in a boarding school or a prison or something. I just have to admit it - I'm a country girl underneath all this showy city front and I want silence at night time and grass outside of my window (the turfed type that is!).

I have made my feelings clear to Jose - with regard to our planned move to Valencia- but for many reasons I won't bore you with, I am afraid I have let him have his way ......and we will be buying another city centre flat. At least though, I have his agreement that in five years time I can have a house. Lets hope I haven't been banged up for assaulting a neighbour before then.

So, little Miss Millie doesn't know what she's got there - her own private house at the age of two. Where as here's me, 31 years old, married in a matter of days and still no house. Victim of my own success people have told me. I suppose thats how I should look at it as it could have turned out that I had a house - but that it was a squat.

S xx