Diary of a move: swirly carpets and leaded windows.

I am so bored now of the whole move thing. I am fed up of sorting through all our belongings, and trying to decide which of them could possibly be taking up 35 cubic tons of extra space. I think I've narrowed it down to either the stash of free eyeshadows and mascaras that I get free in some kind of free makeup bag every time I go back to the UK and stock up on No7 products in Boots or Orla's extensive felt tip pen collection. I haven't worn eyeshadow ever really, apart from a brief foray which involved a lot of orange eyeshadow and a misplaced belief that I looked good in it. But still I keep all these free eyeshadows because I convince myself that you never know, there might be a night where I want to wear it and somehow miraculously will be able to apply it first time to achieve perfect smoky eyes and not look like I've been the victim of a rather nasty mugging.

Anyway, I suspect the current source of my moving gloom is Rightmove. A week or so ago I vowed to myself that I absolutely was not going to look on it again until 1 week before our house-hunting trip back to Derbyshire. But Rightmove is the crack cocaine of my life; I keep saying just one more hit and then I'll stop, but I can't stop, and I know it, and it's making me mental. I started out, during the whole fiasco of not being able to get the kids into school, by saying I didn't care where we lived or what we lived in as long as I got the kids into a decent school. And at the time and maybe for a few weeks after we secured the school I stood by that. Then Stevie started saying that he felt we should really look at much bigger places because it would be a real shock for all of us moving from our big apartment into something tiny. And I agreed with him. Then I went a wee bit mad and started looking at places with pools and paddocks and stables for horses that I really would never, ever want to look after or clean out.

Then as more time went by I could hear the first rumblings of Stevie saying "actually it doesn't matter what size of place we live in: it's only temporary", and I knew I had been saved the hassle of having to clean an outdoor heated pool. Bugger.

Now I keep looking at the same measly 5 properties that all look like they would fit in our bedroom and are decorated in the style of 'old person non-chic' and I feel my heart sink. I'm spoiled. I know that. Nonetheless, I can't help but rank them in order of preference and choose an online favourite - which I can guarantee wouldn't be a real life favourite, and then I pretty much set my heart on it. And then someone goes and rents it before us, and before I know it, I am gutted at being beaten to some really hideous carpets, hiddy leaded windows, and the same 'Adams' fireplace that has been a horrid feature in quite a few of our Derby house moves in the past.

So now we are two and a half weeks from our house hunting trip, and after a quick little browse of Rightmove I am totally not going to look again until one week before the trip when I need to make appointments to view.

Maybe.

A brief history of houses

"Have you started looking for somewhere to live?" is the question I'm hearing on an ever-increasing frequency. "No, not really. It's much too soon." I say. Who am I kidding? I have had a rightmove addiction since I first discovered how effective it was for whiling away hours at work and how much it satisfied my secret craving to nosey around people's homes.

We always liked to move every couple of years when we lived in Derby. We started off in a little house that Stevie rented which was frankly awful. Stevie and his flatmate bought a household of furniture off some guy (probably in a pub) for about £20. This included fridge, freezer, washing machine, disgusting sofa with hideous pattern that was loud enough to disguise some of the stains, but not quite enough to hide the holes. They also had a selection of bar stools (the only other seating, and really, more preferable than sitting on the sofa), and a tv on a stand which I called Evil Edna. If you are familiar with Willo the Wisp, a cartoon on British tv a couple of decades ago, then you'll know exactly what kind of tv I'm talking about. Let's put it this way, it had no remote control, and if you wanted to watch BBC1 after watching ITV then you had to switch the tv off and then on again because you could only go forwards with the channels and not backwards. And that was if the tv didn't decide to switch itself off in the middle of whatever you were watching anyway.



The rest of the furniture was pretty grim, and still when I think of the bed we slept in I have to think of something else very quickly instead or I soon start dwelling on how many people might have died in it.I'm sure the very first item of furniture we bought together was our bed from Habitat because I was in a massive rush not to get scabies from that bed. Happy days, huh?

A 4 bed cottage with a heated pool the size of a large bath? YES! Who cares if it rains: I'll be wet anyway!

Shortly after we bought our first house together in Mickleover, in the outskirts of Derby. A small two bedroomed terraced house which had a tiny kitchen and a bathroom with a louvre door so you could hear your guests peeing from downstairs, and even watch them if you chose the right moment to go up the stairs and angled your eyes the right way. Oh, but we loved that house. It was tiny but it had great streams of light pouring into it, we'd just discovered 'laminate' and thought it was AMAZING, and I solved what I thought were the kitchen and bathroom's worst problems with my discovery of tile and grout paint. Alas, not everything was perfect: I hated the leaded windows (leaded UPVC seems to be a love it or hate it subject. I caught a property programme when I was back in Scotland the other month and there were still people on there going "Oh I LOVE these windows!".) and after writing off our neighbour's car at 6 in the morning and then howling on his doorstep about how sorry I was, it seemed time to move on.

This would be perfect for a ping pong table. I could make pancakes at the same time!

Our next house was a new-build in a new estate in Chellaston. A bit more space, an extra bedroom, a bigger kitchen now we were more experienced in cooking pasta. It was perfect. Except that it was kind of soul-less, and you needed a car to get anywhere, and we had a neighbour from hell. It was the house we brought Orla home to and I quickly realised as I wandered around with her in the pram that during the day there was literally no one else around, everybody was at work. We missed Mickleover.

My hobbies are broad ranging. I like listening to live harp music while riding endless miles on my rocking horse.

And so back we went. A 3 bed semi, but great sized rooms, brilliant bathroom, and we loved it. And then we came here for a couple of years. But what's next? In reality what we rent is not so important to me; I don't see it as a long term move, but I am enjoying rightmove in the meantime!

At last we can live the dream! A dedicated ping pong room with a commode in the corner!

All pictures courtesy of Rightmove.co.ukhttp://www.rightmove.co.uk